

Class rlZ 

Rnn k .T?fe 

Copyriglitl>i 0 ti_ 

COPYRIGHT DEFOSm 



t 


















* 


l 










NORTHERN DIAMONDS 





LOWERED THE CAN CAUTIOUSLY BY A STRING (page 121) 



NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


BY 

FRANK LILLIE POLLOCK 

n 


With Illustrations 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 


HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
<Cfce ftibetfi&e Cambridge 
1917 




COPYRIGHT, 1914 AND 1915, BY PERRY MASON COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY FRANK LILLIE POLLOCK 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published September iqiy 






*S 

<> 


/.? <r 

SEP 26 1917 


©CI.A473713 

Ole* v ( . 


NOTE 


This book has appeared in the Youth's Companion 
in the form of a serial and sequel, and my thanks are 
due to the proprietors of that periodical for permission 
to reprint. 


Frank Lillie Pollock 


V 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

LOWERED THE CAN CAUTIOUSLY BY A STRING 

Frontispiece u 

THE OTHER BOYS HAD BEEN BUSY . . .14 

“that is our cabin, let us come in, I say” 88 ' 

DRAGGED HIM UP, PROTESTING, AND RUBBED 
SNOW ON HIS EARS 106 

FLUNG THE SACK INTO THE MAN*S LAP . . 128 


From dramngs by Harry C. Edwards 













NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


CHAPTER I 

It was nearly eleven o’clock at night when 
some one knocked at the door of Fred Os- 
borne’s room. He was not in the least expect- 
ing any caller at that hour, and had paid no 
attention when he had heard the doorbell of 
the boarding-house ring downstairs, and the 
sound of feet ascending the steps. He has- 
tened to open the door, however, and in the 
dim hallway he recognized the dark, handsome 
face of Maurice Stark, and behind it the tall, 
raw-boned form of Peter Macgregor. 

Both of them uttered an exclamation of 
satisfaction at seeing him. They were both in 
fur caps and overcoats, for it was a sharp Cana- 
dian December night, and at the first glance 
Fred observed that their faces wore an expres- 
sion of excitement. 

“Come in, boys!” he said. “I was n’t going 
to bed. Here, take your coats off . What’s up? 
You look as if something was the matter.” 


2 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“Is Horace in town?” demanded Peter. 

Fred shook his head. Horace was his elder 
brother, a mining engineer mostly employed 
in the North Country. 

“He’s still somewhere in the North Woods. 
I have n’t heard from him since October, but 
I ’m expecting him to turn up almost any day 
now. Why, what’s the matter?” 

“The matter? Something pretty big,” re- 
turned Maurice. 

Maurice Stark was Fred’s most intimate 
friend in Toronto University, from which he 
had himself graduated the summer before. He 
knew Macgregor less well, for the big Scotch- 
Canadian was in the medical school. His home 
place was somewhere far up in the North 
Woods, but he had a great intercollegiate rep- 
utation as a long-distance runner. It was, in 
fact, chiefly in a sporting way that Fred had 
come to know him, for Fred held an amateur 
skating championship, and was even then 
training for the ice tournament to be held in 
Toronto in a few weeks. 

“It’s something big!” Maurice repeated. 
“I wish Horace were here, but — could you 
get a holiday from your office for a week or 
ten days?” 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


3 


“I’ve got it already,” said Fred. “I re- 
served my holidays last summer, and things 
are n’t busy in a real estate office at this time 
of year. I guess I could get two weeks if I 
wanted it. I ’m spending most of my time now 
training for the five and ten miles.” 

“Could you skate a hundred and fifty miles 
in two days?” demanded Macgregor. 

“I might if I had to — if it was a case of life 
and death.” 

“That’s just what it is — a case of life and 
death, and possibly a fortune into the bar- 
gain!” cried Maurice. “You see — but Mac 
has the whole story.” 

The Scottish medical student went to the 
window, raised the blind and peered out at the 
wintry sky. 

“No sign of snow yet,” he said in a tone of 
satisfaction. 

“What’s that got to do with it?” demanded 
Fred, who was burning with curiosity by this 
time. “What’s going on, anyway? Hurry up.” 

“Spoil the skating,” said Macgregor briefly. 
“Well,” he went on after a moment, “this is 
how I had the story. 

“I live away up north of North Bay, you 
know, at a little place called Muirhead. I went 


4 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


home for a little visit last week, and the second 
day I was there they brought in a sick In- 
dian from Hickson, a little farther north — 
sick with smallpox. The Hickson authorities 
would n’t have him at any price, and they had 
just passed him on to us. The people at Muir- 
head did n’t want him either. It was n’t such 
a very bad case of smallpox, but the poor wretch 
had suffered a good deal of exposure, and he 
was pretty shaky. Everybody was in a panic 
about him; they wanted to ship him straight 
down to North Bay; but finally I got him 
fixed up in a sort of isolation camp and looked 
after him myself.” 

“Good for you, Mac!” Fred ejaculated. 

“Oh, it was good hospital training, and I’d 
been recently vaccinated, so I did n’t run any 
danger. It paid me, though, for when I’d 
pulled him around a bit he told me the story, 
and a queer tale it was.” 

Macgregor paused and went to look out of 
the window again with anxiety. Fred was lis- 
tening breathlessly. 

“It seems that last September this Indian, 
along with a couple of half-breeds, went up 
into the woods for the winter trapping, and 
built a cabin on one of the branches of the Abi- 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


5 


tibi River, away up northeast of Lake Tima- 
gami. I know about where it was. I suppose 
you’ve never been up in that country, Os- 
borne?” 

“Never quite as far as that. Last summer I 
was nearly up to Timagami with Horace.” 

Fred had made a good many canoeing trips 
into the Northern wilderness with his brother, 
and Horace himself, as mining engineer, sur- 
veyor, and free-lance prospector, had spent 
most of the last five years in that region. At 
irregular and generally unexpected times he 
would turn up in Toronto with a bale of furs, 
a sack of mineralogical specimens, and a book 
of geological notes, which would presently 
appear in the “University Science Quarterly,” 
or even in more important publications. He 
was an Associate of the Canadian Geographical 
Society, and always expected to hit on a vein 
of mineral that would make his whole family 
millionaires. 

“Well, I’ve been up and down the Abitibi 
in a canoe,” Macgregor went on, “and I think 
I know almost the exact spot where they must 
have built the cabin. Anyhow, I’m certain 
I could find it, for the Indian described it as 
accurately as he could. 


6 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“It seems that the three men trapped there 
till the end of October, and then a white man 
came into their camp. He was all alone, and 
complained of feeling sick. They were kind 
enough to him; he stayed with them, but in a 
few days they found out what the matter was. 
He had smallpox. 

“Now, you know how the Indians and half- 
breeds dread smallpox. They fear it like death 
itself, but these fellows seem to have behaved 
pretty well at first. They did what they could 
for the sick man, but pretty soon one of the 
trappers came down with the disease. It took 
a violent form, and he was dead in a few days. 

“That was too much for the nerve of the 
Indian, and he slipped away and started for 
the settlements south. But he had waited too 
long. He had the germs in him. He sickened 
in the woods, but had strength enough to keep 
going till he came to the first clearings. Some- 
body rushed him in to Hickson, and so he was 
passed on to my hands.” 

“And what became of the white man and 
the other trapper?” demanded Fred. 

“Ah, that’s what nobody knows. The In- 
dian said that the remaining half-breed was 
falling sick when he left. The white man may 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


7 


be dead by this time, or perhaps still living but 
deserted, or he may be well on the road to re- 
covery. But I left out the sensational fea- 
ture of the whole thing. My Indian said that 
the white man had a buckskin sack on him 
full of little stones that shone like fire. He 
seemed to set great store by them, and threat- 
ened to blow the head off anybody who touched 
the bag.” 

“Shining stones? Perhaps they were dia- 
monds!” ejaculated Fred. 

“It looks almost as if he might have found 
the diamond fields, for a fact,” said Peter, 
with sparkling eyes. 

Canada was full of rumors of diamond dis- 
coveries just then. Every Canadian must re- 
member the intense excitement created by the 
report that diamonds had been found in the 
mining regions of northern Ontario. Several 
stones had actually been brought down to 
Toronto and Montreal, where tests showed 
them to be real diamonds, though they were 
mostly small, flawed, and valueless. One, how- 
ever, was said to have brought nine hundred 
dollars, and the news set many parties outfit- 
ting to prospect for the blue-clay beds. But 
they met with no success. In every case the 


8 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


stones had either been picked up in river drift 
or obtained from Indians who could give no 
definite account of where they had been found. 

Could it be that this strange white man had 
actually stumbled on the diamond fields — 
only to fall sick and perhaps to die with the 
secret of his discoveries untold? Fred gazed 
from Peter to Maurice, almost speechless. 

“Naturally, my first idea was to get up a 
rescue party to bring out the sick prospector,” 
Maurice went on. “Put the woods are in the 
worst kind of shape for traveling. The streams 
are all frozen hard, but there has been remark- 
ably little snow yet — not near enough for 
snowshoes or sledges. It would be impossible 
to tramp that distance and pack the supplies. 
Besides, when I came to think it over it struck 
me that the thing was too valuable to share 
with a lot of guides and backwoodsmen. If we 
find that fellow alive, and he has really dis- 
covered anything, it would be strange if he 
would n’t give us a chance to stake out a few 
claims that might be worth thousands — 
maybe millions. And it struck me that there 
was a quicker way to get to him than by snow- 
shoes or dogs. The streams are frozen, the ice 
is clear, and the skating was fine at Muirhead.” 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


9 


“An expedition on skates?” cried Fred. 

“Why not? There’s a clear canoeway, bar- 
ring a few portages, and that means a clear ice 
road till it snows. But it might do that at any 
moment.” 

“A hundred and fifty miles in two days?” 
said Fred. “Sure, we can do it. I’ll set the 
pace, if you fellows can keep up.” 

“Anyhow, I came straight down to the city 
and saw Maurice about it. He said you’d be 
the best third man we could get. But I had hoped 
we could get Horace, so as to have his expert 
opinion on what that man may have found.” 

“The last time I heard from Horace he was 
at Red Lake,” said Fred, “but I wouldn’t 
have any idea where to find him now. He 
always comes back to Toronto for the winter, 
and he can’t be much later than this.” 

“Well, we can’t wait for him,” said Mau- 
rice regretfully. “I’m sorry, but maybe next 
spring will do as well, when we go to prospect 
our diamond claims.” 

“Yes, but we’ve got to get them first,” said 
Peter, “and there’s a man’s life to be saved — 
and it might snow to-night and block the whole 
expedition.” 

“Then we’d get dogs and snowshoes,” Mau- 


10 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


rice remarked, “but it would be far slower 
traveling than on skates.” 

“We must rush things. Could we get away 
to-morrow?” Fred cried. 

“ We must — by the evening train. Maurice 
and I have been making out a list of the things 
we need to buy. Have you a gun? Well, we 
have two rifles anyway, and that’ll be more 
than enough, for we want to go as light as pos- 
sible. You’ll need a sleeping-bag, of course, 
and your roughest, warmest woolen clothes, 
and a couple of heavy sweaters. We’ll carry 
snowshoes and moccasins with us, in case of 
a snowfall. I’ll bring a medicine case and 
disinfectants.” 

“Will we have to pack all that outfit on our 
shoulders?” Fred asked. 

“No, of course not. I have a six-foot to- 
boggan, which I ’ll have fitted with detachable 
steel runners to-morrow, good for either ice or 
snow. We’ll haul it by a rope. But here’s the 
main thing — the grub list.” 

Fred glanced over the scribbled rows of 
the carefully considered items, — bacon, con- 
densed milk, powdered eggs, beans, dehydrated 
vegetables, meal, tea, bread, — and he was 
astonished. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 11 

“Surely we won’t need all this for a week or 
ten days?” 

“That’s a man-killing country in the win- 
ter,” responded the Scotchman grimly. “I 
know it. You have to go well prepared, and 
you never can depend on getting game after 
snow falls. Besides, we’ll have no time for 
hunting. Yes, we’ll need every ounce of that, 
and it ’ll all have to be bought to-morrow. And 
now I suppose we’d better improve the last 
chance of sleeping in a bed that we ’ll have for 
some time.” 

He went to the window and again observed 
the sky, which remained clear and starry, snap- 
ping with frost. 

“No sign of snow, certainly. We can count 
on you, then, Osborne? Of course it’s under- 
stood that we share expenses equally — they 
won’t be heavy — and share anything that we 
may get out of it.” 

“Count on me? I should rather think so!” 
cried Fred fervently. “Why, I’d never have 
forgiven you if you had n’t let me in on this. 
But we’ll have to do a lot of quick shopping 
to-morrow, won’t we? Where do we meet?” 

“At my rooms, as soon after breakfast as 
possible,” replied Mac. “And breakfast early, 


12 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 

and make all the preparations you can before 
that.” 

At this they went away, leaving Fred alone, 
but far too full of excitement to sleep. He 
sorted out his warmest clothing, carefully ex- 
amined and oiled his hockey skates and boots, 
wrote a necessary letter or two, and did such 
other things as occurred to him. It was long 
past one o’clock when he did go to bed, and 
even then he could not sleep. His mind was 
full of the dangerous expedition that he had 
plunged into within the last hours. His imag- 
ination saw vividly the picture of the long ice 
road through the wilderness, a hundred and 
fifty miles to the lonely trappers’ shack, where 
a white man lay sick with a bag of diamonds 
on his breast — or perhaps by this time lay 
dead with the secret of immense riches lost with 
him. And the ice road might close to-morrow. 
Fred tossed and turned in bed, and more than 
once got up to look out the window for signs of 
a snowstorm. 

But he went to sleep at last, and slept 
soundly till awakened by the rattle of his 
alarm-clock, set for half-past six. He had an 
early breakfast and packed his clothes. At 
nine o’clock he telephoned the real estate office 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


13 


where he was employed, and had no difficulty 
in getting his holidays extended another week. 
Business was dull just then. 

At half -past nine he met Maurice and Peter, 
who were waiting for him with impatience. 
Macgregor had already left his toboggan at 
a sporting-goods store to be equipped with 
runners for use on ice. But there remained an 
immense amount of shopping to do, and all the 
things had to be purchased at half a dozen 
different places. Together they went the 
rounds of the shops with a list from which they 
checked off article after article, — ammuni- 
tion, sleeping-bags, moccasins, food, camp out- 
fit, — and they ordered them all sent to 
Macgregor’s rooms by special delivery. 

At four o’clock in the afternoon the boys 
went back, and found the room littered with 
innumerable parcels of every shape and size. 
Only the toboggan had not arrived, though it 
had been promised for the middle of the 
afternoon. 

“Gracious! It looks like a lot!” exclaimed 
Maurice, gazing about at the packages. 

“It won’t look like so much when they’re 
stowed away,” replied Peter. “Let’s get them 
unwrapped, and, Fred, you ’d better go down 


14 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


and hurry up that toboggan. Stand over them 
till it’s done, for we must have it before six 
o’clock.” 

Fred hurried downtown again. The tobog- 
gan was not finished, but the work was un- 
der way. By dint of furious entreaties and rep- 
resentations of the emergency Fred induced 
them to hurry it up. It was not a long job, 
and by a quarter after five Fred was back at 
Mac’s room, accompanied by a messenger 
with the remodeled toboggan. 

The toboggan was of the usual pattern and 
shape, but the cushions had been removed, and 
a thirty-foot moose-hide thong attached for 
hauling. It was fitted with four short steel 
runners, only four inches high, which could be 
removed in a few minutes by unscrewing the 
nuts, so that it could be used as a sledge on ice 
or as a toboggan on deep snow. 

During Fred’s absence the other boys had 
been busy. All the kit was out of the wrappers, 
and the room was a wilderness of brown paper. 
Everything had been packed into four canvas 
dunnage sacks, and now these were firmly 
strapped on the toboggan. The rifles and the 
snowshoes were similarly attached, so that the 
whole outfit was in one secure package. They 



THE OTHER BOYS HAD BEEN BUSY 






NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


15 


hauled this down to the railway station them- 
selves to make sure that there would be no 
delay, and dispatched it by express to Waver- 
ley, where they intended to leave the train. It 
was then a few minutes after six. 

“Well, we’re as good as off now,” remarked 
Maurice, with a long breath. “Our train goes 
at eight. We ’ve got two hours, and now I guess 
I’ll go home and have supper with my folks 
and say good-bye. We’ll all meet at the depot.” 

Neither Fred nor Macgregor had any rela- 
tives in the city and no necessary farewells 
to make. They had supper together at a down- 
town restaurant, and afterwards met Maurice 
at the Union Depot, where they took the north- 
bound express. 

Next morning they awoke from uneasy slum- 
bers to find the train rushing through a deso- 
late landscape of snowy spruces. Through the 
frosted double glass of the windows the morn- 
ing looked clear and cold, but they were relieved 
to see that there was only a little snow on the 
ground, and glimpses of rivers and lakes showed 
clear, shining ice. Evidently the road was still 
open. 

It was half -past ten that forenoon when they 
reached Waverley, and they found that it 


16 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 

was indeed cold. The thermometer stood at 
five above zero; the snow was dry as powder 
underfoot, and the little backwoods village 
looked frozen up. But it was sunny, and the 
biting air was full of the freshness of the 
woods, and the spirits of all the boys rose jubi- 
lantly. 

The laden toboggan had come up on the 
same train with them, and they saw it taken 
out of the express car. Leaving it at the station, 
they went to the village hotel, where they ate 
an early dinner, and changed from their civi- 
lized clothes to the caps, sweaters, and Hudson 
Bay “duffer’ trousers that they had brought 
in their suit-cases. 

They had been the only passengers to leave 
the train, and their arrival produced quite a 
stir in Waverley. It was not the season for 
camping parties, nor for hunting, and no one 
went into the woods for pleasure in the winter. 
The toboggan with its steel runners drew a 
curious group at the station. 

“Goin’ in after moose?” inquired an old 
woodsman while they were at dinner. 

“No,” replied Peter. 

“ Goin’ up to the pulpwood camps, mebbe? ” 
“No.” 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 17 

“What might ye be goin’ into the woods 
fer?” he persisted, after some moments. 

“We might be going in after gold,” an- 
swered Maurice gravely. 

He did not mean it to be taken seriously, 
but he forgot that gold is mined in several 
parts of northern Ontario. Before many hours 
the word spread that a big winter gold strike 
had been made up north, and a party from the 
city was already going to the spot, so that for 
several weeks the village was in a state of ex- 
citement. 

The boys suspected nothing of this, but the 
public curiosity began to be annoying. 

“Can’t we start at once?” Fred suggested. 

“Yes; there’s no use in stopping here 
another hour,” Peter agreed. “We ought to 
catch the fine weather while it lasts, and we can 
make a good many miles in the rest of this 
day.” 

So they left their baggage at the hotel, with 
instructions to have it kept till their return, 
secured their toboggan at the depot, and went 
down to the river. The stream was a belt of 
clear, bluish ice, free from snow except for a 
little drift here and there. 

Half a dozen curious idlers had followed 


18 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


them. Paying no attention, the boys took off 
their moccasins and put on the hockey boots 
with skates attached. They slid out upon the 
ice and dragged the toboggan after them. 

The spectators raised a cheer, which the 
three boys answered with a yell as they struck 
out. The ice was good; the toboggan ran 
smoothly after them, so that they scarcely 
noticed its weight. In a moment the snowy 
roofs of the little village had passed out of 
sight around a bend of the river, and black 
spruce and hemlock woods were on either side. 
The great adventure had begun. 


CHAPTER II 


“Don’t force the pace at first, boys,” Fred 
warned his companions. “Remember, we’ve a 
long way to go.” 

As the expert skater, he had taken the lead- 
ing end of the drag-rope. His advice was hard 
to follow. The ice was in perfect condition; 
the toboggan ran almost without friction on 
its steel shoes, and in that sparkling air it 
seemed that it would be easy to skate a hun- 
dred miles without ever once resting. 

For a little way the river was bordered with 
stumpy clearings; then the dark hemlock and 
jack-pine woods closed down on the shores. 
The skaters had reached the frontier; it might 
well be that there were not a dozen cultivated 
fields between them and the North Pole. 

Here the river was about a hundred feet 
wide, the long ice road that Fred had imag- 
ined. Comparatively little snow had yet fallen, 
and that little seemed to have come with high 
winds, which had swept the ice clear. More, 
however, might be looked for any day. 

But for that day they were safe. They 


20 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


rushed ahead, forcing the pace a little, after 
all, in a swinging single file, with the tobog- 
gan gliding behind. In great curves the river 
wound through the woods and frozen swamps, 
and only twice that day had they to go ashore 
to get round roaring, unfrozen rapids. Each of 
those obstructions cost the boys half an hour 
of labor before they could get the toboggan 
through the dense underbrush that choked 
the portage. But they had counted on such 
delays. 

Not a breath of wind stirred, and the forest 
was profoundly still. Full of wild life though 
it undoubtedly was, not a sign of it was visible, 
except now and then a chain of delicate tracks 
along the shore. 

Evening comes early in that latitude and 
season. At sunset Macgregor estimated that 
they had covered thirty miles. 

“Time to camp, boys!” he shouted from the 
rear. “Look out for a good place — shelter 
and lots of dry wood.” 

Two or three miles farther on they found 
it — a spot where several large spruce trees 
had fallen together, and lay dry and dead near 
the shore. They drew up the toboggan and 
exchanged their skating-boots for moccasins. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


21 


Maurice began to cut up wood with a small 
axe; the others trampled down the snow in a 
circle. 

Dusk was already falling when the fire blazed 
up, making all at once a spot of almost home- 
like cheerfulness. Fred chopped a hole in the 
ice in order to fill the kettle, and while it 
was boiling, they cut down a number of small 
saplings, and placed them in lean-to fashion 
against a ridgepole. The balsam twigs that 
they trimmed off they threw inside, until the 
snow was covered with a great heap of fra- 
grant boughs. On it they spread the sleeping- 
bags to face the fire. 

They supped that night on fried bacon, dried 
eggs, oatmeal cakes, and tea — real voyageur’s 
tea, hot and strong, flavored with brown sugar 
and wood smoke, and drunk out of tin cups. 

Leaning back on the balsam couch, they 
made merry over their meal, while the stars 
came out white and clear over the dark woods. 
There was every prospect now of their reach- 
ing the trappers’ cabin in two days more, 
at most. There were only the two serious 
dangers — a snowstorm might spoil the ice, 
and Macgregor might not be able to hit upon 
the right place. 


22 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


The boys were tired enough to be drowsy as 
soon as they had finished supper. Little by 
little their conversation flagged; the chance of 
finding diamonds ceased to interest them, and 
presently they built up the fire and crawled 
into their sleeping-bags. It was a cold night, 
and except for the occasional cry of a hunting 
owl or lynx, the wilderness was silent as death. 

The boys were up early the next morning; 
smoke was rising from their fire before the sun 
was well off the horizon. The weather seemed 
slightly warmer, and a wind was rising from 
the west, but it was not strong enough to im- 
pede them. 

After breakfast, they repacked the kit on 
the toboggan. The spot had been home for a 
night; now nothing was left except a pile of 
crushed twigs and a few black brands on the 
trampled snow. 

The travelers were fresh again; now they 
settled down to a long, steady stroke that 
carried them on rapidly. Three times they 
had to land to pass round open rapids or dan- 
gerous ice, but about eleven o’clock Macgregor 
saw what he had been looking for. It was a 
spot where several trees had been cut down 
on the shore. A rather faint trail showed 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


23 


through the cedar thickets. It was the begin- 
ning of the main portage that ran three miles 
northwest, straight across country to the Abi- 
tibi River. They had been mortally afraid 
of overrunning the spot. 

They boiled the noon kettle of tea to fortify 
themselves for the long crossing. Then they 
unshipped the runners from the toboggan, put 
on their moccasins and snowshoes, and started 
ashore across a range of low, densely wooded 
hills. 

The trail was blazed at long intervals, but 
not cleared, and it was hard, exasperating 
work to get the toboggan through the snowy 
tangle. After two hours they came out on the 
crest of a hill overlooking a great river that ran 
like a gleaming steel-blue ribbon far into the 
north. 

“The Abitibi!” cried Macgregor. 

They had come a good seventy miles from 
Waverley. At that rate, they might expect 
to reach their destination the next day; and, 
greatly encouraged, they coasted on the tobog- 
gan down to the ice, and set out again on 
skates. 

During the tramp the sky had grown hazy, 
and the northwest wind was blowing stronger. 


24 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


For some time it was not troublesome, for it 
came from the left, but it continued to freshen, 
and the clouds darkened ominously. 

Late in the afternoon the travelers came 
suddenly upon the second of the known land- 
marks. From the west a smaller river, name- 
less, as far as they knew, poured past a bluff 
of black granite into the Abitibi, making a 
fifty-yard stretch of open water that tumbled 
and foamed with a hoarse uproar among ice- 
bound boulders. Here they had to change 
their course, for according to Macgregor’s cal- 
culation, it was about fifty miles up this river 
that the cabin stood. 

Again they went ashore, and after struggling 
through two hundred yards of dense thickets 
reached the little nameless river from the west. 

The change in their course brought them 
squarely into the eye of the wind, and they 
felt the difference instantly. The breeze had 
risen to half a gale; the whole sky had clouded. 
It was only an hour from sunset, but no one 
mentioned camping; they were resolved to 
go on while the light lasted. And suddenly 
Fred, struggling on with bent head against the 
wind, saw that the front of his blue sweater 
was growing powdered with white grains. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


25 


“We’re caught, boys!” he exclaimed; and 
they stopped to look at the menacing sky. 

Snow was drifting down in fine powder, 
and glancing over the ice past their feet. 
Straight down from the great Hudson Bay 
barrens the storm was coming, and the roar of 
the forest, now that they stopped to listen, 
was like that of the tempestuous sea. 

“‘Snow meal, snow a great deal,’” Mac- 
gregor quoted, with forced cheerfulness. 

“Let’s hope not!” exclaimed Maurice. 

And Fred added: “Anyhow, let’s get on 
while we can.” 

On they went, skating fast. As yet the 
snow was no hindrance, for it spun off the 
smooth ice as fast as it fell. It was the wind 
that troubled them, for it roared down the 
river channel with disheartening force. 

It was especially discouraging to be checked 
thus on the last lap, but none of them thought 
of giving up. They settled doggedly to the 
task, although it took all their strength and 
wind to keep going. But all three were in 
pretty good training, and they stuck to it for 
more than an hour. The forest was growing 
dark, and the snow was coming faster. Then 
Maurice, rather dubiously, suggested a halt. 


26 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“Nonsense ! We’re good for another ten miles, 
at least!” cried Peter, who seemed tireless. 

They shot ahead again. Evening settled 
early, with the snow falling thick. The ice 
was white now; skates and toboggan left 
black streaks, immediately obliterated by 
fresh flakes. Just before complete darkness 
fell, the boys made a short halt, built a fire, 
and boiled tea. No more was said of camp- 
ing. They had tacitly resolved to struggle on 
as long as they could keep going, for they 
knew that they would have no chance to use 
their skates after that night. 

It grew dark, but never pitch dark, for the 
reflection from the snow gave light enough for 
them to see the road. Even yet the snow lay so 
light that the blades cut it without an effort. 

The wind, however, was hard to fight 
against. In spite of his amateur champion- 
ship, Fred was the first to give out. For some 
time he had felt himself flagging, dropping 
behind, and then recovering; but all at once 
his legs gave way, and he collapsed in a heap 
on the ice, half unconscious from fatigue. 

Macgregor and Stark bent over him. 

“Got to put him on the toboggan,” de- 
clared the Scotchman. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


27 


Maurice felt that it was madness for two of 
them to try to haul the greater load, but with- 
out protest he helped to roll the dazed young- 
ster in the blankets, and to strap him on the 
sledge. The next stage always seemed to him 
a sort of waking nightmare; he never quite 
knew how long it lasted. The wind bore 
against him like a wall; the drag of the tobog- 
gan seemed intolerable. Half dead with ex- 
haustion and fatigue, he fixed his eyes on Mac- 
gregor’s broad back, and went on with short, 
forced strokes, with the feeling that each 
marked the extreme limit of his strength. 

Suddenly his leader stopped. A great black 
space seemed to have opened in the white road 
ahead. 

4 ‘Another portage!” Macgregor shouted in 
Maurice’s ear. 

A long, unfrozen rapid was thundering in the 
gloom. With maddening difficulty, Maurice 
and Macgregor hacked a road through willow 
thickets and got the toboggan past. 

Again they were on the ice, with the rapid 
behind them. It seemed to Maurice that the 
horror of that exertion would never end; then 
suddenly the night seemed to turn pitch black, 
and he felt himself shaken by the shoulder. 


28 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“Get on the toboggan, Maurice ! Come, wake 
up!” Macgregor was saying. “Wake up!” 

Dimly he realized that he was sitting on the 
ice — that they had stopped — that Fred was 
up again. Too stupefied to question anything, 
he rolled into the blanket out of which Fred 
had crawled, and instantly went sound asleep. 

It seemed only a moment until he was roused 
again. Drunk with sleep, he clutched the tow- 
rope blindly, while Fred, who was completely 
done this time, again took his place on the 
sledge. Only Macgregor seemed proof against 
fatigue. Bent against the gale, he skated vig- 
orously at the forward end of the line, and 
his strong voice shouted back encouragements 
that Maurice hardly heard. 

The snow was now growing so deep on the 
ice that the skates ploughed through it with 
difficulty. Still the boys labored on, minute 
after minute, mile after mile. Maurice felt 
numb with fatigue and half asleep as he skated 
blindly, and suddenly he ran sharply into 
Macgregor, who had stopped short. There was 
another break just ahead — a long cascade 
this time, where snowy pocks showed like 
white blurs on the black water. 

“Going to portage?” mumbled Maurice. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


29 


“No use trying to go any farther,” replied 
the medical student, and his voice was hoarse. 
“Fred ’s played out. Snow’s getting too deep, 
anyway. Better camp here.” 

Maurice would have been glad to drop where 
he stood. But they dragged the toboggan 
ashore somehow, caring little where they landed 
it. Peter rolled Fred off into the snow. The boy 
groaned, but did not waken, and they began 
to unpack the supplies with stiffened hands. 

“Got to get something hot into us quick,” 
said Peter thickly. “Help me make a fire.” 

Probably they were all nearer death than 
they realized. Maurice wanted only to sleep. 
However, in a sort of daze, he broke off branches, 
peeled bark, and they had a fire blazing up in 
the falling snowflakes. The wind whirled and 
scattered it, but they piled on larger sticks, and 
Macgregor filled the kettle from the river. 
When the water was hot he poured in a whole 
tin of condensed milk, added a cake of choco- 
late, a handful of sugar and another of oat- 
meal, too stiffened to measure out anything. 

Maurice had collapsed into a dead sleep in 
the snow. Peter shook him awake, and between 
them they managed to arouse Fred with great 
difficulty. Still half asleep they swallowed the 


30 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


rich, steaming mess from the kettle. It set their 
blood moving again, but they were too thor- 
oughly worn out to think of building a camp. 
They crept into their sleeping-bags, buttoned 
the flaps down over their heads and went to 
sleep regardless of consequences. 

Fred awoke to find himself almost steaming 
hot, and in utter darkness and silence. All his 
muscles ached, and he could not imagine where 
he was. A weight held him down when he tried 
to move, but he turned over at last and sat up 
with an effort. A glare of white light made him 
blink. He had been buried under more than 
two feet of snow. 

It was broad daylight. All the world was 
white, and a raging snowstorm was driving 
through the forest. The tree-tops creaked and 
roared, and the powdery snow whirled like 
smoke. Fred felt utterly bewildered. There 
was no sign of the camp-fire, nor of the to- 
boggan, nor of any of his companions, noth- 
ing but a few mounds on the drifted white 
surface. 

Finally he crawled out of his sleeping-outfit 
and dug into one of these mounds. Two feet 
down he came upon the surface of a sleeping- 
bag, and punched it vigorously. It stirred; the 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 31 

flap opened, and Macgregor thrust his face out, 
blinking, red and dazed. 

“Time to get up!” Fred shouted. 

Mac crawled out and shook off the snow, 
looking disconcerted. 

“Snowed in, with a vengeance!” he re- 
marked. “Where’s the camp — and where’s 
Maurice?” 

After prodding about they located the third 
member of their party at last, and dug him out. 
As for the camp, there was none, and they 
could only guess at where the toboggan with 
their stores might be buried. 

“This ends our skating,” said Maurice. 
“It’ll have to be snowshoes after this. Good 
thing we got so far last night.” 

“No thanks to me ! ” Fred remarked. “ I was 
the expert skater; I believe I said I’d set the 
pace, and I was the first to cave in. I hope I do 
better with the snowshoes.” 

“Neither snowshoes nor skates to-day,” 
said Peter. “We can’t travel till this storm 
blows over. Nothing for it but to build a camp 
and sit tight.” 

After groping about for some time they 
found the toboggan, unstrapped the snow- 
shoes, and used them as shovels to clear away a 


32 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


circular place. In doing so they came upon the 
black brands of last night’s fire, with the camp 
kettle upon them where they had left it. Fred 
ploughed through the snow and collected wood 
for a fresh fire, while Peter and Maurice set up 
stakes and poles and built a roof of hemlock 
branches to afford shelter from the storm. It 
was only a rude shed with one side open to face 
the fire, but it kept off the snow and wind and 
proved fairly comfortable. Fred had coffee 
made by this time, and it did not take long to 
fry a pan of bacon. They seated themselves on 
a heap of boughs at the edge of the shelter and 
ate and drank. They all were stiff and sore, 
but the hot food and coffee made a decided 
improvement. 

“What surprises me,” remarked Maurice, 
“is that we did n’t freeze last night, sleeping 
under the snow. But I never felt warmer in 
bed.” 

“It was the snow that did it. Snow makes a 
splendid nonconductor of heat,” replied Mac- 
gregor. “Better than blankets. I remember 
hearing of a man who was caught by a bliz- 
zard crossing a big barren up north with a 
train of dogs. The dogs would n’t face the 
storm; he lost his directions; and finally he 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


33 


turned the sledge over and got under it with 
the dogs around him, and let it snow. He 
stayed there a day and a half, asleep most of 
the time, and would n’t have known when the 
storm was over, only that a pack of timber 
wolves smelt him and tried to dig him out. 
They ran when they found out what was there, 
but he bagged two of them with his rifle.” 

“I don’t believe even timber wolves would 
have wakened me this morning. I never was so 
stiff and used up in my life,” Maurice com- 
mented on this tale of adventure. 

“Yes, we need the rest,” said Mac. “We 
overdid it yesterday, and we could n’t have 
gone far to-day in any case.” 

“But meanwhile that man at the cabin may 
be dying,” exclaimed Fred. 

“If he’s dead it can’t be helped,” responded 
the Scotchman. “We’re doing all that’s hu- 
manly possible. But if he ’s alive, don’t forget 
that he can’t get away while this storm lasts, 
any more than we can.” 

“Well, it looks as if the storm would last all 
day,” said Fred, gazing upwards. 

The blizzard did last all that day, reaching 
its height toward the middle of the afternoon, 
but it was not extremely cold, and the boys 


34 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


were fairly comfortable. They lounged on the 
blankets in the shelter of the camp, and re- 
cuperated from their fatigue, discussing their 
chances of still reaching the cabin in time to do 
any good. None of them could guess accur- 
ately how far they had come in that terrible 
night, but at the worst they could not think the 
cabin more than forty miles farther. This 
distance would have to be traveled on snow- 
shoes, however, not skates, and none of the 
boys were very expert snowshoers. It would 
be certainly more than one day’s tramp. 

Toward night the wind lessened, though it 
was still snowing fast. The boys piled on logs 
enough to keep the fire smouldering all night 
in spite of the snowflakes, and went to sleep 
under cover of the hemlock roof. Maurice 
awoke toward the middle of the night, and 
noticed drowsily that it had stopped snowing, 
and that a star or two was visible overhead. 

Next morning dawned sparkling clear and 
very cold, with not a breath of wind. Every- 
thing was deep and fluffy with the fresh snow, 
and when the sun came up the glare was almost 
blinding. It would be good weather for snow- 
shoe travel, and the boys all felt fit again for 
another hard day. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


35 


After breakfast, therefore, they packed the 
supplies upon the toboggan, unscrewed the 
steel runners, and put on the new snowshoes. 

“We’d better stick to the river,” Peter re- 
marked. “It may make it a little farther, but 
it gives us a clear road, and if we follow the 
river we can’t miss the cabin.” 

“No danger of going through air-holes in the 
ice?” queried Fred. 

“Not much. An air-hole is n’t generally big 
enough to let a snowshoe go through. We’ll 
pull you out if you do. Come along.” 

Off they went again. But they had not gone 
far before discovering that travel was going to 
be less easy than they had thought. The snow 
was light and the snowshoes sank deep. They 
moved in a cloud of puffing white powder, and 
the heavy toboggan went down so that it was 
difficult to draw it. Without the smooth, level 
road of the river they could hardly have pro- 
gressed at all. 

They braced themselves to the work and 
plodded on, taking turns at going first to break 
the road. The sun shone down in a white 
dazzle. There was no heat in it, but the glare 
was so strong that they had to pull their caps 
low over their eyes for fear of snow-blindness 


36 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


— the most deadly enemy of the winter trav- 
eler in the North. During the forenoon they 
thought they made hardly more than ten miles, 
and at noon they halted, made a fire and 
boiled tea. 

The hot drink and an hour’s rest made them 
ready for the road again. Twice that afternoon 
they had to make a long detour through the 
woods to avoid unfrozen rapids, and once the 
brush was so dense that they had to cut a way 
for the toboggan with the axe. Once, too, the 
ice suddenly cracked under Fred’s foot, and he 
flung himself forward just in time to avoid the 
black water gushing up through the snowed- 
over air-hole. 

The life of the wilderness was beginning to 
emerge after the storm. Along the shores they 
saw the tracks of mink. Once they encountered 
a plunging trail across the river where several 
timber wolves must have crossed the night be- 
fore, and late in the afternoon Maurice shot a 
couple of spruce grouse in a thicket. He flung 
them on the toboggan, and they arrived at 
camp that night frozen into solid lumps. 

It was plainly impossible to reach the cabin 
that day. Peter, who was keenly on the look- 
out, failed to recognize any of the landmarks. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


37 


“We’d better camp early, boys,” he said. 
“We can’t make it to-day, and there’s no use 
in getting snowshoe cramp and being tied up 
for a week.” 

They kept on, however, till the sun was 
almost down. A faint but piercing northwest 
breeze had arisen, and they halted in the lee of 
a dense cedar thicket close to the river. A huge 
log had fallen down the shore, and this would 
make an excellent backing for the fire during 
the night. 

Drawing up the toboggan, the boys took off 
their snowshoes and began to shovel out a 
circular pit for the camp. The snow had 
drifted deep in that spot. Before they came to 
the bottom the snow was heaped so high that 
the pit was shoulder-deep. It was all the 
better for shelter, and they cut cedar poles and 
roofed one side of it, producing a most cozy and 
sheltered nook. 

Fred continued to pull cedar twigs for bed- 
ding, while Peter and Maurice unpacked the 
toboggan and lighted the fire against the big 
log. Now that it was laid bare this log proved to 
be indeed a monster. It must have been nearly 
three feet in diameter, and was probably hol- 
low, but would keep the fire smouldering in- 


38 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


definitely. Fred plucked the frozen grouse 
with some difficulty, cut »them up and put 
them into the kettle to thaw out and stew. 

This consumed some time, and it was rather 
late when supper was ready. A bitterly cold 
night was setting in. The icy breeze whined 
through the trees, but the sheltered pit of the 
camp was a warm and cozy place, casting its 
firelight high into the branches overhead. 

Snowshoe cramp had attacked none of the 
boys, but the unaccustomed muscles were 
growing stiff and sore. By Macgregor’s advice 
they all took off moccasins and stockings and 
massaged their calves and ankles thoroughly, 
afterwards roasting them well before the fire. 
One side of the big log was a glowing red 
ember now, and they piled fresh wood beside 
it, laid the rifles ready, and crept into their 
sleeping-bags under the shelter. 

Fred did not know how long he had slept 
when he was awakened by a sort of nervous 
shock. He raised his head and glanced about. 
All was still in the camp. His companions lay 
motionless in their bags. The fire had burned 
low, and the air of the zero night cut his face 
like a knife. He could not imagine what had 
awakened him, but he felt that he ought to get 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


39 


up and replenish the fire and he was trying to 
make up his mind to crawl out of his warm nest 
when he was startled by a sort of dull, jarring 
rumble. 

It seemed to come from the fire itself. Fred 
uttered a scared cry that woke both the other 
boys instantly. 

“ What ’s the matter? What is it? ” they both 
exclaimed. 

Before Fred could answer, there was a sort of 
upheaval. The fire was dashed aside. Smoke 
and ashes flew in every direction, and they had 
a cloudy glimpse of something charging out 
through the smoke — something huge and 
black and lightning quick. 

“Jump! Run!” yelled Peter, scrambling to 
get out of his sleeping-bag. 

At the shout and scramble the animal 
wheeled like a flash and plunged at the side of 
the pit, trying to reach the top with a single 
leap. It fell short, and came down in a cloud of 
snow. 

Fred had got clear from the encumbering 
bag by this time, and floundered out of the 
pit without knowing exactly how he did it. 
He found Maurice close behind him. Peter 
missed his footing and tumbled back with a 


40 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


horrified yell, and Maurice seized him by the 
leg as he went down and dragged him back 
bodily. 

Before they recovered from their panic they 
bolted several yards away, plunging knee-deep 
in the drifts, and then Peter stopped. 

“Hold on!” he exclaimed. “It isn’t after 
us!” 

“But what was it?” stammered Maurice, 
out of breath. 

Looking back, they could see nothing but the 
faint glow from the scattered brands. But they 
could not overlook the whole interior of the 
camp, where the intruder must be now lying 
quiet. 

Trying to collect himself, Fred told how he 
had been awakened. 

“It came straight out of the fire!” he 
declared. 

“Out of the log, I guess,” said Peter. “Here, 
I know what it must be. It’s simply a bear!” 

“A bear!” ejaculated Fred. 

“Yes, a bear, that must have had his winter 
den in that big log. He was hibernating there, 
and our fire burned into his den and roused 
him out. That’s all.” 

“Quite enough, I should think,” said Mau- 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


41 


rice. “Bears are ugly-tempered when they’re 
disturbed from their winter dens, I ’ve heard. 
He’s got possession of our camp, now. What 
’ll we do?” 

“We’ll freeze if we don’t do something 
pretty quick,” Fred added. 

In fact the boys were standing in stock- 
inged feet in the snow, and the night was 
bitterly cold. All looked quiet in what they 
could see of the camp. 

“I don’t see why one of us had n’t the wit to 
grab a gun!” said Peter bitterly. 

He turned and began to wade back cau- 
tiously toward the camp. The other boys 
followed him, till they were close enough to 
look into the pit. No animal was in sight. 

“Perhaps he’s bolted out the other side,” 
muttered Peter. “Who’s going to go down 
there and find out?” 

Nobody volunteered. If the bear was still in 
the camp he must be under the roofed-over 
shelter, and, in fact, as they stood shivering 
and listening they heard a sound of stirring 
about under the cedar poles of the roof. 

“He’s there!” exclaimed Fred. 

“And eating up our stores, as like as not!” 
cried Maurice. 


42 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 

This made the case considerably more seri- 
ous. 

“We must get him out of that!” Macgregor 
exclaimed. 

How to do it was the difficulty, and, still 
more, how to do it with safety. Both the 
rifles were still lying loaded under the shelter, 
probably under the very feet of the bear. 

“Well, we’ve got to take a chance!” de- 
clared Macgregor at last. “Talk about cold 
feet! We’ll certainly have them frozen if we 
stand here much longer. Scatter out, boys, all 
around the camp. Then we’ll snowball the 
brute out. Likely he’s too scared to want to 
fight. Anyhow, if he jumps out on one side, 
the man on the opposite side must jump into 
the camp and grab a rifle.” 

It looked risky, to provoke a charge from the 
animal in that deep snow, where they could 
hardly move, but they waded around the camp 
till they stood at equal distances apart, sur- 
rounding the hollowed space. 

“Now let him have it!” cried Peter. 

Immediately they began to throw snowballs 
into the camp, aiming at that dark hole under 
the cedar roof where the animal was hidden. 
But the snow was too dry to pack into lumps. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


43 


and the light masses they flung produced no 
effect. Peter broke off branches from a dead 
tree and threw them into the shelter, without 
causing the bear to come out. Finally Fred, 
who happened to be standing beside a birch 
tree, peeled off a great strip of bark and lighted 
it with a match. 

“ Hold on ! Don’t throw that ! ” yelled Peter. 

He was too late. Fred had already cast the 
flaming mass into the camp, too close to the 
piles of cedar twigs. The resinous leaves caught 
and flashed up. There was a glare of smoky 
flame — a wild scramble and scurry under the 
shelter, and the bear burst out, and plunged at 
the snowy sides of the pit on the side opposite 
Fred’s position. 

He fell back as he had done before, but 
floundered up with a second leap. Maurice, 
who was nearest, gave a shrill yell and tried to 
dash aside, but he stumbled and went head- 
long in the deep snow. 

Fred instantly leaped into the camp. The 
shelter was full of smoke and light flame, but 
he knew where the rifles lay, and snatched one. 
Straightening up, he was just in time to see the 
bear vanishing with long leaps into the dark- 
ness, ploughing up clouds of snow. 


44 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 

He fired one shot wildly, then another, but 
there was no sign of the animal’s being 
stopped, and the next instant it was out of 
sight. 

“Quick! Stamp out this fire!” exclaimed 
Peter at his shoulder. 

They tore down the flaming branches and 
beat them out in the snow. The light flame 
was easily put out, but it left the camp a chaos 
of blackened twigs and ashes. 

“Well, we turned him out,” said Maurice, 
who had hastened in to help. “Did you hit 
him, do you think?” 

“I wish I’d killed him!” said Fred. “He’s 
ruined our camp. But I don’t believe I touched 
him. He was going too fast.” 

Peter had raked the camp-fire together and 
thrown on fresh wood. A bright blaze sprang 
up, and by its light they took off their stock- 
ings and looked for the dead white of frozen 
toes. But it was only Maurice who had 
suffered the least frost-bite, and this yielded to 
a little snow-rubbing. The heavy woolen 
stockings, and perhaps the depth of the snow 
itself had protected the rest of them. 

Putting on his moccasins Fred then went to 
look for results from his shots, but came back 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


45 


reporting not a drop of blood on the snow. 
The bullets had missed cleanly, and the animal 
was probably miles away by that time. 

“What do you suppose he’ll do for the rest 
of the winter?” Maurice asked. 

“Oh, he’ll find some hole to crawl into, or 
perhaps he’ll just creep under a log and let the 
snow bury him,” said Peter. “He’ll have to 
look a long time to find another snug nest like 
this one, though.” 

The big log was hollow, as they had thought, 
and the fire had burned well into the cavity. 
They could see the nest where the bear had 
lain, soft with rotted wood and strewn with 
black hairs. It seemed a pity to have turned 
him out of so cozy a sleeping-place. 

The boys’ own sleeping-place was in a com- 
plete state of wreck. The cedar roofing had 
fallen in, and everything was littered with 
snow and burned brush. The fire had been 
too light and too quickly extinguished to do 
any damage to the stores, however, and they 
were relieved to find that the bear had eaten 
none of the bacon or bread. Probably the 
animal had been merely cowering there for 
shelter, afraid to come out. 

They did not attempt to rebuild the shelter 


46 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


roof, but cleared away the snow and ashes, 
and sat in their sleeping-bags by the fire. 
After all the excitement none of them felt 
like sleeping. They were hungry, though, and 
finally they boiled tea and cooked a pan of 
bacon and dried eggs. Even after this they lay 
talking for a long time, and it was between mid- 
night and dawn when they finally fell asleep. 

This was the reason why it was long after 
sunrise when they awoke, feeling rather as if 
they had had a bad night. It was another 
clear, bright day, though still very cold, and 
they felt it imperative that they should reach 
the cabin before nightfall. 

That forenoon they made all the speed they 
could, halted for only a brief rest at noon, and 
pushed on energetically through the afternoon. 
The cabin could not be far, unless Macgregor 
had mistaken the way. Look as he would, he 
could not make out any landmarks that he 
could remember; but he had been through only 
by canoe in the summer, and the woods have 
a very different appearance in the winter. 

As the afternoon wore on they began to grow 
anxious. At every turning they looked eagerly 
ahead, but they saw nothing except the un- 
broken forest. It was nearly sunset when Mau- 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 47 

rice suddenly pointed forward with a shout of 
excitement. 

They had just rounded a bend of the river. 
A hundred yards away, nestling in a hemlock 
thicket, stood a squat log hut. But no trail 
led to its door, no smoke rose from its chimney, 
the snow had drifted almost to its eaves, and 
it looked gloomy and desolate as the darken- 
ing wilderness itself. 


CHAPTER III 


There was so grim an air of desolation about 
the hut that the boys stopped short with a 
sense of dread. 

“Can this really be it?” Maurice mut- 
tered. 

The hut and its surroundings were exactly 
as the Indian had described them. They ven- 
tured forward hesitatingly, reconnoitered, and 
approached the door. It stood ajar two or 
three inches; a heavy drift of snow lay against 
it. Clearly no living man was in the cabin. 

“We’ve come too late, boys,” said Mac- 
gregor. “However, let’s have a look.” 

Using one of his snowshoes as a shovel, he 
began to clear the doorway. Fred helped him. 
They scraped away the snow, and forced the 
door open. 

For fear of infection, they contented them- 
selves with peeping in from the entrance; a 
glance showed them that no man was in that 
dim interior, dead or alive. 

The cabin was a mere hut, built of small 
logs, chinked with moss and mud, and was 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


49 


less than five feet high at the eaves. The floor 
was of clay; the roof appeared to be of bark 
and moss thatch, supported on poles. A small 
window of some skin or membrane let in a 
faint light, and the rough fireplace was full of 
snow that had blown down the chimney. 

No one was there, but some one had left in 
haste. The whole interior was in the wildest 
confusion, littered with all sorts of articles of 
forest housekeeping flung about pell-mell — 
cooking-utensils, scraps of clothing, blankets, 
furs, traps; they could not make out all the 
articles that encumbered the floor. 

“The fellow must have simply got well and 
gone away with the other half-breed,” said 
Macgregor, after they had surveyed the place 
in silence. “Well, that ends our hope of be- 
ing millionaires next year. We’ve come on a 
fool’s errand.” 

“Nothing for it now but to go home again, 
is there?” said Fred, in disgust. 

“We’ve come one hundred and fifty miles to 
see this camp, and we ought to look through 
it,” said Maurice. 

“We must disinfect the place before we can 
go in. And there’s no chance of our finding 
any diamonds here,” Fred remarked. 


50 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“I want to have a look through, anyway. 
Let’s get out the fumigating machine.” 

It was a formaldehyde outfit, consisting 
simply of a can of the disinfectant with a 
bracket attached underneath to hold a small 
spirit lamp. By the heat of the flame, formalin 
gas, one of the deadliest germ-killers known, 
was given off. 

Macgregor opened the can, lighted the pale 
spirit flame, and set the apparatus on a rude 
shelf that happened to be just inside the hut. 
They forced the door shut again, and sealed 
it by throwing water against it, for the water 
promptly froze. It was not necessary to close 
the chimney, for the germicidal gas is heavier 
than air, and fills a room exactly as water fills 
a tank. 

As it would take the disinfectant ten or 
twelve hours to do its work, they hastened 
to construct a camp, for it was growing dark. 
It was a rather melancholy evening. The near- 
ness of the cabin, with its sinister associations, 
affected them disagreeably; and, moreover, 
they were all tired with the day’s tramp, and 
chagrined and mortified at having come, as 
Peter said, “on a fool’s errand.” After all their 
glittering hopes, there was nothing now for 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


51 


them except a week’s snowshoe tramp back 
to Waverley, with barely enough provisions to 
see them through. 

Still they were curious about the cabin, and 
before breakfast the next morning they burst 
open the ice-sealed door. A suffocating odor 
issued forth, so powerful that they staggered 
back. 

“Good gracious!” gasped Fred, after a 
spasm of coughing. “It must certainly be 
safe after that!” 

They found it impossible to go in until 
the gas had cleared away, and so, leaving the 
door wide open, they returned to breakfast. 
Afterward they idled about, trying to kill 
time; it was afternoon before they could ven- 
ture inside the cabin for more than a mo- 
ment. 

It was disagreeable even then, for the whole 
interior was filled with the heavy, suffocating 
odor. They coughed, and their eyes watered, 
but they managed to endure it. 

As they had seen, the contents of the place 
were all topsy-turvy. The furniture consisted 
solely of a rough table of split planks, and a 
couple of rough seats. A heap of rusty, brown 
sapin in a corner, covered with a torn blanket. 


52 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


represented a bed — possibly the one in which 
the trapper had died. 

In one corner stood a double-barreled shot- 
gun, still loaded. Three pairs of snowshoes 
were thrust under the rafters; several worn 
moccasins lay on the floor, along with nearly 
a dozen steel traps, a bundle of furs, some of 
which were valuable, a camp kettle, an axe, 
strips of hide, dry bones, a blanket, fishing- 
tackle — an unspeakable litter of things, some 
worthless, some to men in a wilderness pre- 
cious as gold. 

The last occupants had plainly left in such 
a desperate hurry that they had abandoned 
most of their possessions. Why had they done 
it? The boys could not guess. 

The heavy formalin fumes rose and choked 
them as they poked over the rubbish. But 
they found nothing to show the fate of the 
prospector and the surviving half-breed, or 
even to tell them whether this was really the 
cabin they were seeking. 

“Throw this rubbish into the fireplace,” 
said Macgregor. “Burning is the best thing 
for it, and the fire will ventilate the place. 
There’s no danger of germs on the metal 
things.” 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


53 


“These furs are worth something,” said 
Fred, who had been looking them over. 
“There are a dozen or so of mink and marten 
— enough to pay the expenses of the trip.” 

They laid the furs aside, and cramming the 
rest of the litter into the snowy fireplace, with 
the dead balsam boughs, set it afire. In the 
red blaze the hut assumed an unexpectedly 
homelike aspect. 

“Not such a bad place for the winter, after 
all,” Maurice remarked, casting his eye about. 
“I should n’t mind spending a month trapping 
here myself. What if we did, fellows, eh? 
Here are plenty of traps, and we might clear 
three or four hundred dollars, with a little 
luck.” 

“ Here ’s something new,” interrupted Peter, 
who had been grubbing about in a corner. 

He came forward with a woodsman’s “tur- 
key” in his hands — a heavy canvas knap- 
sack, much stained and battered, and rather 
heavy. 

“Something in this,” he continued, trying 
the rusty buckles. “Why, what’s the matter, 
Fred?” 

For Fred had uttered a sudden cry, and 
they saw his face turn deathly white. He 


54 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 

snatched the sack, tore it open, and shook it 
out. 

A number of pieces of rock fell to the floor, 
a couple of geologist’s hammers, a pair of 
socks, and a couple of small, oilcloth-covered 
notebooks. 

On these Fred pounced, and opened them. 
They were full of penciled notes. 

“They’re his!” the boy exclaimed wildly. 
“They’re Horace’s notebooks! I knew his 
turkey. Horace was here. Don’t you see? 
He was the sick man!” 

For a minute his companions, hardly com- 
prehending, looked on in amazement. Then 
Macgregor took one of the books from his 
hand. On the inside of the cover was plainly 
written, “Horace Osborne, Toronto.” 

“It’s true!” he muttered. “It must really 
have been Horace.” Then, collecting his wits, 
he added, “But he must be all right, since 
he’s gone away.” 

“No!” Fred cried. “He’d never have gone 
away leaving his notes and specimens. It 
was his whole summer’s work. He’d have 
thrown away anything else. He must be dead.” 

“He was vaccinated. He’s sure not to have 
died of smallpox,” Peter urged. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 55 

Fred had collapsed on the mud floor, hold- 
ing the “turkey,” and fairly crying. 

“He had the diamonds on him. That half- 
breed may have murdered him, and then fled 
in a hurry. Things look like it,” said Maurice 
aside to Peter. 

“Yes, but then Horace’s body would be 
here,” the Scotchman returned. “I don’t un- 
derstand it.” 

“They can’t have both died, either, or 
they ’d both be here. So they must both have 
gone. But no trapper would have left these 
valuable pelts, any more than Horace would 
have left his notes.” 

“There’s something mysterious here,” said 
Fred, getting up resolutely, and wiping the 
tears from his eyes. “Horace has been here. 
Something’s happened to him, and we’ve 
got to find out what it is.” 

“ And we ’ll find out — if it takes all winter ! ” 
Macgregor assured him. 

They searched the hut afresh, but found no 
clues. They now regretted having burned the 
heap of rubbish, which perhaps had contained 
something to throw light on the problem. 

During the rest of that afternoon they 
searched and searched again throughout the 


56 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


cabin, and prowled about its neighborhood. 
They dug into the snowdrifts, poked into the 
brushwood, scouted into the forest in the faint 
hope of finding something that would cast light 
on Horace’s fate. All they found was the trap- 
per’s birch canoe, laid up ashore, and buried 
in snow. 

At dusk they got supper, and ate it in a 
rather gloomy silence. 

“We’ve nothing to go on,” said Macgregor. 
“I can’t believe that Horace is dead, though, 
and we must stay on the spot till we know 
something more definite.” 

“Of course we must,” Maurice agreed. 

“I should n’t have asked it of you, boys,” 
said Fred. “I’d made up my mind to stay, 
though, till I found out something certain — 
and it would have been mighty lonely.” 

“Nonsense! Do you think we’d have left 
you?” Maurice exclaimed. “Aren’t we all 
Horace’s friends? The only thing I’m think- 
ing of is the grub. We have barely enough for 
a week more.” 

“What of that?” said Peter. “We have 
rifles, have n’t we? The woods ought to be 
full of deer — plenty of partridges and small 
game, anyway. We must make a regular 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


57 


business of hunting till we get enough meat 
for a week, and we must economize, of course, 
on our bread and canned stuff. Then there 
are sure to be whitefish or trout in the nearest 
lake, and we can fish through the ice. Lucky 
the Indians left their hooks and lines. And 
we can trap, too.” 

“Boys,” cried Fred, “you’re both bricks. 
You’re solid gold — ” A choke in his voice 
stopped him. 

“A pair of gold bricks!” laughed Maurice, 
with a suspicious huskiness in his own tones. 

But the thing was settled. 

It turned colder that night, and the next 
day dawned with blustering snow flurries. 
Their open camp was far from comfortable, 
and with some reluctance they moved into the 
cabin. 

A good deal of fresh snow had drifted in, 
but they swept it out, brought in fresh balsam 
twigs for couches, and lighted a roaring fire. 

The hut was decidedly homelike and cozy, 
and a vast improvement on the open camp. 
The smell of formaldehyde had gone entirely. 
The light from the skin-covered window was 
poor, but that seemed to be the only drawback, 
until, as the temperature rose, the roof showed 


58 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


a leak near the door. Snow water dripped in 
freely, in spite of their efforts to stop it, until 
Maurice finally clambered to the roof, cleared 
away the snow, tore up the thatch, and covered 
the defective spot with a large piece of old 
deer-hide. 

In the afternoon it stopped snowing; Mac- 
gregor and Fred, with the two rifles, made a 
wide circuit round the cabin, but killed no 
game except half a dozen spruce grouse. Not 
a deer trail did they see; probably the animals 
were yarded for the winter. 

Without being discouraged, however, Peter 
set out again the next morning, this time with 
Maurice. Fred, left alone, spent most of the 
day in cutting wood and storing it by the 
cabin door, and the hunters did not return 
until just after sunset. They were empty- 
handed, but in high spirits, and had a great 
tale to tell. 

Five miles from camp, Maurice and Peter 
had come upon the fresh trail of a moose, and 
had followed it nearly all day. Toward the 
middle of the afternoon, however, they were 
obliged to give up the chase and turn back, 
for they were fully fifteen miles from home. 

On the way to the cabin they chanced upon 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


59 


a well-beaten deer trail that they felt certain 
must lead to a “yard.” It was too late to 
follow it that day, but they determined to have 
a great hunt on the morrow. 

Killing yarded deer is not exactly sports- 
manlike, and is unlawful besides; but law is 
understood to yield to the necessities of the 
frontier, and the boys needed the meat badly. 

The next morning they were off early. It 
was clear and cold. A little wind blew the 
powdery snow like puffs of smoke from the 
trees, and the biting air was full of life. It 
was impossible to be anything but gay in that 
atmosphere; even Fred, oppressed with anxiety 
as he was, felt its effect. 

The fresh snow was criss-crossed here and 
there with the tracks of small animals, — rab- 
bits, foxes, and squirrels, — and now and again 
a spruce partridge rose with a roar. These 
birds were plentiful, and the boys might 
have made a full bag if they had ventured to 
shoot. 

It was nearly noon before they reached the 
deer trail. They followed it back for some 
twenty minutes, and came down into a low 
bottom, grown up with small birch and poplar. 
Fred had only the vaguest idea what a deer 


60 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


yard was like; he half expected a dense huddle 
of deer in a small, beaten space, and he was 
consequently much startled when he suddenly 
heard a sound of crashing and running in the 
thickets. 

Macgregor’s rifle banged almost in his ear. 
Maurice fired at the same instant. Something 
large and grayish had shot up into view behind 
a thicket, and had departed with the speed of 
an arrow. Peter fired again at the flying tar- 
get, and Fred caught a single glimpse of a 
buck, with antlered head carried high, vanish- 
ing through a screen of birches. 

“Hit!” shouted Macgregor, and he ran for- 
ward, clicking another cartridge into his rifle. 

They had walked right into the “yard.” 
All round them the snow was trampled into 
narrow trails where the herd had moved about, 
feeding on the shrubbery. With a little more 
caution they might have got three or four of 
the animals. 

They found the buck a hundred yards away, 
dead in the snow. It was no small task to get 
him back to the cabin, for he was too fat and 
heavy to carry, even if they had cut him up. 
They had to haul the carcass with a thong, 
like a toboggan, over the snow. The weather 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


61 


changed, and it was beginning to bluster again 
when they arrived, dead tired, to find the fire 
gone out and the cabin cold. But they rejoiced 
at being supplied with meat enough to last 
them for perhaps a month. 


CHAPTER IV 


That night they heard the timber wolves 
for the first time, howling mournfully a little 
way back in the woods. No doubt they had 
scented the fresh carcass of the deer, and prob- 
ably there would have been no venison in the 
morning if they had not had the wisdom to 
carry the carcass into the cabin. Peter opened 
the door quietly and slipped out with a cocked 
rifle, but the wolves were too wary for him. 
Not one was in sight, and the howling receded 
and grew fainter. But they heard it at inter- 
vals again during the night — a dismal and 
savage note, that made them feel like making 
the fire burn brighter. 

“They must have followed the trail where we 
dragged the buck home,” said Maurice. “ Good 
thing they did n’t happen to strike it before we 
got back.” 

“Oh, they’d hardly venture to attack three 
of us,” replied Peter. “I almost wish they 
would. We could mow them down with our 
repeaters, and you know there’s a Government 
bounty of ten dollars a head on dead timber 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 68 

wolves. We might make quite a pile, and be- 
sides the skins must be worth something.” 

“ Might set some traps,” Fred suggested. 

“No use. The timber wolf is far too wise to 
get into any steel trap. That’s why so few of 
them are killed. But say, boys, why could n’t 
we manage to ambush ’em?” 

“How?” Maurice demanded. 

“Well, suppose I shot a couple of rabbits 
to-morrow night and went through the woods 
dragging them after me, so as to make a blood 
trail. Any wolves that happened to cross it 
would certainly follow, and I ’d lead them past 
a spot where you fellows would be ambushed, 
ready to pump lead into them.” 

“Sounds all right,” said Fred, “but sup- 
pose they overtook you before you got to the 
ambush?” 

“Oh, they wouldn’t dare to attack me. 
They’d keep me in sight, stop if I stopped, and 
turn if I turned, waiting for a chance to take 
me at a disadvantage. A shot would scatter 
them, anyway. The only trouble would be 
that they’d scatter so quick when you opened 
fire that you would n’t be able to bag more 
than one or two. And I don’t suppose the same 
trick could be worked twice.” 


64 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


They discussed the matter all that evening 
and grew so enthusiastic over it that they de- 
termined to try it the next night. There was no 
hope now of diamonds, and the expedition had 
cost them nearly two hundred dollars. A few 
wolf bounties and pelts, together with the furs 
found in the cabin, would cover this and per- 
haps leave a little profit. 

It was cold and cloudy the next day, and 
they waited impatiently for evening. The 
moon would not rise till nearly midnight, and 
it was necessary to wait in order to have light 
enough for the proposed ambush. They sallied 
out toward eleven o’clock, and shot three 
rabbits, which Peter attached to a deerskin 
thong. Selecting an open glade, Maurice and 
Fred established themselves in ambush under 
the thickets, while Peter started on a wide 
circle through the woods, trailing his bait, in 
the hope of attracting the wolves. 

Fred and Maurice waited for more than two 
hours, nearly frozen, stamping and beating 
their arms, listening for the hunting cry of the 
wolf pack. At the end of that time Peter re- 
appeared, tired and disgusted. The wolves had 
failed to do their part, and had not picked up 
the trail. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


65 


Still he was not discouraged, and insisted on 
trying it again the next evening. This time 
Fred and Maurice stayed in the cabin to keep 
warm, listening intently. At the first, distant 
howl they were to rush out and ensconce them- 
selves in a prearranged spot, a quarter of a mile 
up the river, which Peter was to pass. They 
kept the two repeating rifles, while Mac carried 
the double-barreled gun, loaded with buckshot, 
which they had found in the cabin. 

Half a mile from the shanty Peter shot a 
swamp hare that was nibbling a spruce trunk, 
and a little way farther he secured another. 
These carcasses he tied together with a deerskin 
thong as before, and trailed them in the wake of 
his snowshoes. This time he intended to make 
a longer circuit than on the preceding night. 

He dragged this bait across a hardwood ridge 
and down into a great cedar swamp on the 
other side. In hard weather all the wild life of 
the woods resorts to such places for shelter, and 
here the wolves would be hunting if there was a 
pack in the neighborhood. But he found few 
tracks and no sign at all of wolves. 

After traveling slowly for two or three miles, 
Mac sat down on a log to rest, and as the 
warmth of exercise died out, the cold nipped 


66 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


him to the bone through the “four-point” 
blanket coat. He got up and moved on, in- 
tending to return in a long curve toward the 
cabin. He did not much care, after all, whether 
he started any wolves. It was too cold for 
hunting that night. 

The dry snow swished round his ankles at 
the fall of the long racquets. He still dragged 
the dead hares, which were now frozen almost 
as hard as wood, but not too hard to leave a 
scent. 

He had reached the other side of the swamp 
when his ears caught suddenly a high-pitched, 
mournful howl, ending in a sort of yelp, sound- 
ing indefinitely far away, yet clearly heard 
through the tense air. He knew well what it 
was. The pack had struck a trail — possibly 
his own, possibly that of a deer. He would very 
soon learn which. 

Thrilling with excitement, he walked on 
slowly, turning his head to listen. Again and 
again he caught the hunting chorus of the wolf 
pack, far away, but still perceptibly nearer. 
He was just then in the midst of a tangled 
stretch of second-growth timber, and he hur- 
ried on to reach more open ground. As soon 
as he felt convinced that the pack was follow- 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 67 

ing him he intended to turn back toward the 
river. 

He kept moving on, however, and at last 
came to the river before he expected it. He was 
still more than a mile above the point where the 
ambush was to be set, and he paused on the 
shore and hearkened. Far away through the 
moonlit woods he heard the savage, triumph- 
ant yell, much nearer now — so much so that 
he felt that he might as well make for the am- 
bush at once. He felt suddenly alone and in 
peril; he longed earnestly to see his compan- 
ions. 

He started down the river at a swinging 
trot, still listening over his shoulder, when the 
ice suddenly gave way under his feet, and he 
went down with so swift a plunge that he had 
time for only a shuddering gasp. 

He had stepped on an airhole lightly crusted 
over with snow. He went down to his neck 
without touching bottom, and the black water 
surged up to his face. It was the gun that 
saved him; it caught across the hole, and he 
clung to it fiercely. As the current fortunately 
was not rapid, he was able to draw himself up 
and out upon the ice. 

But he found himself unable to extricate 


68 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


his feet. The long-tailed snowshoes had gone 
down point foremost, and now were crossed 
under the ice, and refused to come up. He 
dared not cut them loose, for in the deep snow 
he would have been helpless. Growing fainter 
at every moment, he struggled in the deadly 
chill of the water for four or five minutes before 
at last he succeeded in bringing them up end 
first, as they had gone down. 

When he staggered back stiffly upon the 
snow the very life seemed withdrawn from his 
bones. His heavy clothing had frozen into a 
coat of mail almost as hard as iron plate. There 
was no sensation left in his limbs, and he 
trembled with a numb shuddering. 

Long forest training told him what must be 
done. He must have a fire at once. He would 
have to find a dry birch tree, or a splintered 
pine that would light easily. 

His benumbed brain clung to this idea, and 
he began to stumble toward shore, his snow- 
shoes sheets of ice, and his clothes rattling 
as he went. But with a hunter’s instinct he 
stuck to his gun, tucking it under his icy arm. 

He could see no birch tree, and the bank was 
bordered with an impenetrable growth of alders. 
He dragged himself up the river, and each step 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


69 


seemed to require a more and more intolerable 
exertion. 

He could not feel his feet as he lifted and 
put them down; when he saw them moving 
they looked like things independent of himself. 
He had ceased to feel cold. He no longer felt 
anything, except a deadly weariness that was 
crushing him into the snow. 

He went on, however, driven by the fighting 
instinct, till of a sudden he saw it — the birch 
tree he was seeking, shining spectrally among 
the black spruces by the river. 

It was an old, half-dead tree, covered with 
great curls of bark that would flare up at the 
touch of a match. He had matches in a water- 
proof box, and he contrived to get them out of 
his frozen pocket. He dropped the box half a 
dozen times in trying to open it, opened it at 
last with his teeth, and dropped it again, 
spilling the matches into the snow. 

Snow is as dry as sand at that temperature, 
however, and he scraped them up, and tried 
to strike one on the gun barrel. But he was 
unable to hold the bit of wood in his numbed 
fingers; there was absolutely no feeling in his 
hands, and the match fell from his grasp at 
every attempt. This is a familiar peril in the 


70 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


NorthWoods, where dozens of men have frozen 
to death with firewood and matches beside 
them, from sheer inability to strike a light. 

Mac beat his hands together without effect. 
He began to grow indifferent; and as he 
fumbled again for the dropped match he fell at 
full length into the snow. 

A sense of pleasant relief overcame him, and 
he decided to rest there for a few minutes. The 
snow was soft, and he had never before realized 
how warm it was. His shoulders were propped 
against the roots of the birch, and with a hazy 
consciousness that game might be expected, he 
dragged his gun across his knees and cocked it. 
Then, with a comfortable sense of duty done, 
he closed his eyes. 

Curious and delightful fancies began at once 
to flood his brain, fancies so vivid that he 
seemed not to lose consciousness at all. How 
long he lay there he never knew. But he grew 
alive at last to a vise-like pressure on his left 
arm that seemed to have lasted for years, and 
which was growing to excruciating pain. 

He opened his eyes with a great effort. There 
were savage, hairy faces close to his own, pour- 
ing out clouds of steaming breath into the 
frosty air. Something had him by the arm with 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


71 


such force that he almost felt the bones 
cracking, and something was tugging at his leg. 

The nervous shock aroused him as nothing 
else on earth could have done. A tingle of 
horrified animation rushed through his body. 
He was on the point of being torn to pieces by 
the wolf pack that had trailed him, and the 
powerful stimulus of the new peril called out 
the last reserves of strength. 

He made a convulsive start. His frozen hand 
was on the trigger of the shotgun, and both 
barrels went off. At the sudden flash and 
report the half-dozen wolves bolted inconti- 
nently — all but one gray monster that got the 
full force of the buckshot and dropped in its 
tracks. 

Macgregor staggered to his feet, full of terri- 
ble cramps and pains in every muscle. But his 
head had cleared somewhat. He saw the dry 
birch tree and again tried to fumble for a 
match. Almost by sheer luck he succeeded in 
striking it. The birch bark caught fire and 
flamed crackling up the trunk. The dry trunk 
itself caught and burned like a torch. 

Macgregor rubbed his face and hands 
savagely with snow. They hurt intensely, but 
he welcomed the pain, for it showed that they 


72 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


were not frozen. He was beginning to feel a 
little more life when he heard the creak and 
flap of snowshoes, and saw Fred and Maurice 
hurrying up the river toward him. 

“ What’s the matter? ” they shouted, as 
soon as within hearing distance. “We heard 
the shot. See any wolves ?” 

Mac tried to shout something in answer, but 
found that he could not speak distinctly. 

“I see you’ve bagged one,” cried Fred, 
rushing up. “Why, man, you’re covered with 
ice! What’s happened to you?” 

“Been in the river,” Peter managed to 
ejaculate. “Get my moccasins off, boys — 
rub feet with snow. Afraid — I’m going — to 
lose toes!” 

With exclamations of sympathy the boys 
got his frozen outer clothing off* — broke it off, 
in fact, from the caked ice, — removed his moc- 
casins and socks, and rubbed his feet with 
snow. Several of the toes had whitened, but 
they regained color after some minutes’ rub- 
bing, and began to hurt excruciatingly. Peter 
squirmed with the pain. 

“But I don’t mind it,” he said. “Rub away, 
boys. I certainly thought I was going to lose 
part of my feet.” 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


73 


Perhaps the solid cake of ice that had in- 
stantly formed over his heavy socks and 
moccasins had actually protected them from 
freezing. At any rate, he got off much more 
easily than he would have thought possible. 
The attack of the wolves had left little mark 
on him, either. He had a few light lacerations 
on his hands and face, but for the most part 
the beasts seemed to have laid hold on him 
where the thick, ice-caked cloth was almost 
like armor plate. And no doubt the arrival of 
the pack had saved him from death by freezing. 

Fred dragged up the carcass of the fallen 
wolf and skinned its head and ears for the 
Government bounty. The rest of the pelt was 
so terribly torn with buckshot as to be worth- 
less. 

“Your scheme didn’t work, Mac,” he 
remarked. 

“It did work. It worked only too well,” 
Macgregor protested. “It’s the best scheme 
for catching wolves I ever heard of.” 

“You don’t want to try it again, do you?” 

“Well — that’s a different thing!” he ad- 
mitted. “No, I don’t know that I do. But if 
I had n’t gone through the ice we would prob- 
ably have bagged nearly the whole pack.” 


74 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


After thorough snow friction Mac considered 
it safe to approach the fire by degrees. The 
ice thawed off his clothing, but left him wet to 
the skin. It was certain that he ought to get 
back to the cabin and dry clothing as soon as 
possible, and he thought he would be able now 
to travel. It was less than two miles. 

It proved a painful two miles, but he reached 
the cabin at last, where his companions put him 
to bed in one of the bunks, covered him warmly, 
and dosed him with boiling tea. It was then 
growing close to three o’clock in the morning. 

Naturally they did not get up as early as 
usual for breakfast. Macgregor’s feet were 
sore and somewhat swollen, but there was no 
longer any danger of serious trouble. He had 
to remain in the cabin that day and was unable 
to put on his moccasins, but he was much 
elated at his luck in getting off so lightly. It 
was snowing and stormy, besides; none of the 
boys went out much, except for the endless 
task of cutting firewood. They lounged about 
the cabin and discussed the problems that per- 
plexed them so much — whether Horace had 
really discovered any diamonds, and what had 
become of him, and how and why — until the 
subject was utterly worn out. Maurice then 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 75 

made a checkerboard, and they played matches 
till they wearied of this amusement also. 

The next day they had to fall back on it 
again, however, for the weather was still 
stormy. During the afternoon it snowed 
heavily. Mac’s feet were much better, and he 
wore his moccasins, but judged it unsafe to go 
out into the snow for another day. In the 
midst of the storm Fred and Maurice cut down 
a couple of dead hemlocks, and chopped part 
of them up for fuel. It was amazing to see what 
a quantity of wood the rough fireplace con- 
sumed. 

“If we had acres of diamond beds we could 
n’t afford such fires in town,” Maurice re- 
marked. 

The next day the weather cleared, but 
turned bitterly cold. In the afternoon Mau- 
rice ventured out to look for game, and came 
back about four o’clock with three spruce 
grouse and a frost-bitten nose. The boys were 
all standing outside the cabin door, when Fred 
suddenly started. 

Round the bend a sledge had just appeared 
on the river. It was drawn by six dogs, coming 
at a flagging trot through the deep snow; four 
men on snowshoes ran behind and beside it. 


76 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


For a moment the men seemed to hesitate as 
they caught sight of the hut. But they came 
on, turned up the shore, and drove straight to 
the cabin at a gallop. 

Three of the voyageurs were plainly French 
Canadians, or possibly French half-breeds, 
wiry, weather-beaten men, dark almost as 
Indians; the fourth was big and heavily built, 
and wore a red beard that was now a mass of 
ice. All of them wore cartridge belts, and 
four rifles lay on the packed sledge. 

“Bo 9 jou 9 /” cried the dark-faced men, as 
they came within hailing distance. 

“Bon jour /” Maurice shouted back. He 
was the only one who knew any French, 
and he knew but little. He was searching his 
memory for a few more words, when the red- 
bearded man came forward and nodded. 

“Did n’t know any one was living here this 
winter, ” he said . “ Trapping ? ’ ’ 

“Hunting a little,” said Macgregor. “Un- 
harness your dogs and come inside. It’s a 
cold day for the trail.” 

“You bet!” said one of the French, and 
they made no difficulty about accepting the 
invitation. They rapidly unhitched the dogs, 
which had sat down, snarling and snapping 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 77 

in their traces; then they unpacked the sledge 
and carried the dunnage inside the cabin. 

They were a wild-looking set. The French 
Canadians were probably woodsmen, shanty- 
men or hunters, apparently good-natured and 
jovial, but rough and uncivilized. The Anglo- 
Saxon, who seemed to be their leader, was 
more repellent, and when he took off his 
capote , he revealed a countenance of savage 
brutality, with small eyes, a cruel mouth, and 
a protuberant jaw, framed in masses of bricky 
red hair and beard. 

“I don’t much like the looks of this crowd !” 
Maurice whispered in Macgregor’s ear. 

“Rough lot, but they’ll be away in the 
morning,” answered Peter. 

In the North it is obligatory to be hospitable, 
and the boys prepared to feed and entertain 
the party as if they were the most welcome 
guests. At the usual time they prepared 
supper. The four newcomers ate enormously. 
During the meal the red-bearded man ex- 
plained that his name was Mitchell, that he 
was “going north with these breeds,” as he 
rather vaguely put it, and that they had run 
somewhat short of provisions. 

Luckily, they had food for the dogs; one of 


78 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


the “ breeds” presently produced six frozen 
whitefish and carried them outside, where he 
gave one to each dog with much dexterity. 
The fish were bolted in a twinkling, and the 
unhappy brutes began to look for a sheltered 
spot where they could sleep through the sub- 
Arctic night. 

After supper the French, stuffed to reple- 
tion, lay back and engaged in an animated 
conversation in a dialect that seemed to be 
a mixture of French, English, and Ojibwa. 
They laughed uproariously, and seemed thor- 
oughly happy. But Mitchell said little, and 
continually examined the interior of the hut 
with keen, restless eyes. 

The next morning the visitors showed no 
anxiety to be off. They fed the dogs, lounged 
about, smoked, and stayed until dinner time. 
After dinner Mitchell announced that the dogs 
were tired, and would have to rest that day. 

It is very unusual to take a day off the trail 
for the sake of the dogs, but the boys made 
no objection, although secretly much annoyed. 
The presence of the strangers inspired them 
all with uneasiness. Besides, they could not 
continue their search or speak freely of it. 

The next morning the strangers said nothing 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


79 


about moving on. They sat about the fire, and 
evading a suggestion that they help to cut 
wood, played cards nearly all day. 

“What’s the matter with them? Are they 
going to stay here all winter?” said Fred, in 
great irritation. 

Certainly the dogs needed no more rest. 
They pervaded the place, trying to bolt into 
the warm cabin whenever the door was opened, 
and spending much time in leaping vainly but 
hopefully at the frozen carcass of the deer, 
swung high on a bough in the open air. 

The prodigious appetites of the newcomers 
had not diminished in the least, and the carcass 
was rapidly growing less. The boys thought 
that at the least their guests might help re- 
plenish the larder, and the next morning Mac- 
gregor proposed that they all go after deer. 

“No good to-day,” said Mitchell gruffly. 
“Snow’s coming. You boys go if you want 
to. We’ll mind camp.” 

That was the last straw; there was no sign 
whatever of storm. Peter went out of the 
cabin to consult with his friends. 

“They think we’re greenhorns from the 
city, and they’re trying to impose on us!” he 
said angrily. “If they don’t make a move 


80 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


by to-morrow morning, I ’ll give them a pretty 
strong hint.” 

All the same, fresh meat had to be procured, 
and after dinner Macgregor and Maurice took 
the two rifles and went back to the deer yard 
to see if the herd might not have returned. 
Fred stayed to watch, for the boys disliked to 
leave their guests alone. 

The quartette were playing cards as usual, 
and Fred presently began to feel lonely. After 
hanging about the hut for a time, he went out 
to pass the time in cutting wood. 

It was very cold, but he much preferred the 
outer air to the smoky atmosphere of the shack, 
and he soon grew warm in handling the axe. 
He spent nearly the whole afternoon at this 
exercise, and it was after four o’clock when 
he finally reentered the cabin. 

He opened the door rather quietly, and was 
astounded at what he saw. 

The card game had been abandoned. The 
shanty was in a state of confusion and dis- 
order. Blankets and bedding were strewn pell- 
mell; the contents of the dunnage sacks were 
tossed upon the floor. Everything movable in 
the place seemed to have been moved, and a 
great part of the moss chinking had been torn 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


81 


from one of the walls, as if a hurried and 
desperate search had been made for some- 
thing. 

And the object of the search had been found. 
The four men were bent together over the 
table, watching intently, while Mitchell took 
something from a small leather sack. They 
were all so feverishly intent that Fred tiptoed 
up close behind them unobserved. 

Mitchell was shaking out little lumps from 
the sack; each was wrapped in paper, and 
each, when he unwrapped it, was a small 
pebble that flashed fire. 

Fred’s heart jumped, and he gasped. The 
diamonds! Horace had really found them, 
then! The sack seemed to contain a large 
handful — it was appalling to think what they 
might be worth! And then it flashed upon 
the boy with increased certainty that his 
brother must be dead, for otherwise he would 
never have left them there. 

Mitchell looked up and round at that 
instant. At his explosive oath, the French- 
men wheeled like a flash. For a moment 
there was a deathly silence, while the four 
men glared at the boy with scowling faces. 
Fred realized that not only the possession of 


82 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


the stones, but probably his life, hung on his 
presence of mind. 

“Those things are my brother’s, Mr. 
Mitchell,” he said, with an outward coolness 
that astonished himself. “He hid them in 
this cabin. I don’t know how you came to 
find them, but I’ll ask you to hand them 
back.” 

His voice broke the spell of silence. One 
of the French said something in the ear of 
another, and then dropped quietly back toward 
the corner where the men’s four rifles stood 
together. 

But Mitchell swept the pebbles together 
back into the bag. “Your brother’s?” he 
said. “Why, I bought ’em myself from a gang 
of O jib was down on Timagami. Rock crystals 
they call ’em, and I reckon to get ten or twelve 
dollars for ’em at Cochrane.” 

He spoke with such assurance that Fred was 
taken aback, and did not know what to say. 
Then his eye fell on one of the scraps of paper 
in which a stone had been wrapped. He leaned 
forward and picked it up. 

“Did you put this on it?” he exclaimed 
indignantly. “Look! It ’s my brother ’s hand- 
writing. ‘October second, Nottaway River, 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


83 


near Burnt Lake/ it says. That’s where he 
found it. And look at that!” He swept his 
hand round the devastated cabin. “What did 
you tear the place to pieces for if you were n’t 
hunting for something?” 

“They’re mine, anyway,” retorted the 
woodsman, slipping the precious bag into his 
pocket. “Them papers was wrapped round 
’em when I got ’em.” 

“Impossible!” said Fred. “I tell you — ” 

“Shut up!” said Mitchell suddenly, with a 
snarl. 

A sense of his peril cooled Fred’s anger like 
an icy douche, and he was silent. There was 
death in the four grim faces that regarded him. 
He had no doubt that the men would murder 
for a far less sum than the value of that sack- 
ful of precious stones. 

For an instant he thought hard. He was 
entirely unarmed, and the men’s rifles stood 
just behind them. He would have to wait for 
reinforcements. It was surely almost time 
for Maurice and Peter to be back, and they 
must be warned of the danger before they 
entered the cabin. 

“All right,” he said, with sudden mildness. 
“If you can prove that the stones are really 


84 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


yours, I’m satisfied. The sack looked like my 
brother’s, that’s all.” 

Mitchell gave a contemptuous grin. The 
Canadians lighted their pipes again. 

Fred felt that they watched him closely, 
however. He lounged about the cabin with 
assumed nonchalance for a quarter of an hour, 
and then ventured to go out on the pretext of 
bringing in a fresh log for the fire. But once 
outdoors, he put on his snowshoes and rushed 
down the trail to intercept his friends. 


CHAPTER V 


In deadly fear of hearing a shot or a shout 
from behind, Fred did not stop running 
until he was out of sight of the cabin. He 
knew the direction from which the hunters 
would be sure to return, and he posted himself 
in ambush, in a spot whence he could keep 
watch in front and rear. 

Fortunately, he was not pursued. Fortu- 
nately, too, he had not very long to wait there, 
for it was bitter cold. In the course of half 
an hour, he discerned two black specks cross- 
ing a strip of barrens to the north. 

Fred ran to meet them. The hunters had 
no deer, but each of them carried a great bunch 
of partridges. 

“What’s the matter? Is the camp on fire?” 
shouted Macgregor, as Fred dashed up. 

He had to stop to regain breath before he 
could gasp out an account of what had hap- 
pened. 

“The diamonds!” Maurice exclaimed. 

“But, don’t you see, this makes it certain 


86 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


that Horace never left that cabin alive!” Fred 
said heavily. 

It looked like it, indeed, and no one found 
anything to say. Macgregor’s face had grown 
very grim. 

“Anyhow, Horace risked his life for those 
stones, — perhaps lost it, — and we ’re not go- 
ing to let those wretches carry them off,” he 
said. “Besides, the diamonds are the least im- 
portant thing. Those fellows have got our 
cabin, grub, ammunition, everything. We’re 
stranded if we don’t get them back.” 

“ We must take them by surprise,” said Fred. 
“I’d been thinking that we might come up to 
the cabin quietly, throw the door open sud- 
denly, and hold them up.” 

“They have four rifles,” suggested Maurice. 

“Yes, but they won’t be ready to use them,” 
said the Scotchman. “It’s the only way.” 

He threw open the chamber of his rifle, 
glanced in, then fumbled in his pockets. 

“Lend me a couple of cartridges, Maurice.” 

“Don’t say you haven’t any! I used the 
last of mine on those partridges.” 

“Then we’re done!” Peter exclaimed, and 
he struck his hand furiously on the breech of 
the empty repeater. “ Not a shot between us.” 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


87 


They looked at one another hopelessly. 

“Come, we’ve got to do something — or 
starve in the snow,” said Peter, at last. “We’ll 
hold them up, anyhow — with empty guns.” 

“But suppose they fire on us?” Fred asked. 

“At the first move any one makes toward a 
gun, we’ll jump for him. The cabin’s too 
small to use rifles in, and if it comes to a rough- 
and-tumble, why, we’ll just have to keep our 
end up. But I don’t think it will come to 
that. We’ll have them bluffed.” 

Certainly it seemed a long chance to take, 
but, as Peter said, it was better than starving 
in the snow. They laid down the partridges, 
and began to move toward the cabin. 

“Take the axe, if it’s by the door, Fred,” 
Macgregor advised. “You ’ll go first, and open 
the door. We ’ll aim over your shoulders. And 
remember, at the first hostile movement, jump 
for them with clubbed rifles and the axe.” 

They went on, rather slowly. The cabin 
came in view, with no one in sight, and they 
made a detour through the hemlocks so as to 
get as close to the door as possible without 
showing themselves. 

“Now for it!” muttered Macgregor. 

With hearts beating tumultuously, they burst 


88 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


out from the evergreen screen. But they had 
taken only two or three steps, when the cabin 
door opened a few inches, and four black rifle 
barrels were thrust out. 

“ Halte-la!” shouted one of the Canadians. 

The boys stopped in their tracks. They 
could see nothing of the men within, nothing 
except those four ominous muzzles in the 
streak of firelight that shone through the 
crack. 

“What do you mean?” cried Macgregor 
boldly. “Don’t you know who we are? Put 
those guns away, and let us in ! ” 

He ventured another step, but a second voice 
roared from the doorway, “Stop!” 

It was Mitchell. Peter stopped suddenly. 
The hoarse voice bellowed again, “Git!” 

“What’s the matter with you?” Peter per- 
sisted. “That is our cabin. Let us come in, 
I say.” 

“Git, I say!” Mitchell repeated. “After 
this, we’ll shoot on sight. I give ye till I 
count three. One — two — ” 

“Back off. We ’re caught ! ” Peter muttered. 

They backed away slowly. When they were 
at the edge of the thickets, Mitchell shouted 
again : — 



“THAT IS OUR CABIN. LET US COME IN, I SAY” 




















































































































































' 



















NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


89 


“When we’re gone, you can come back! 
Now keep away for your own good ! ” 

The cabin door closed as they stepped back 
into the undergrowth. Macgregor’s face was 
black as he tucked the useless rifle under his 
arm. They were all boiling with rage and 
mortification. 

“If we’d only turned those scoundrels out 
yesterday!” Peter muttered. 

“We couldn’t foresee this,” said Maurice. 
“Those fellows evidently knew that the dia- 
monds were here — or strongly suspected it. 
They must have heard of it from your sick 
Indian, or from the third trapper. They must 
have been astonished to find us on the spot.” 

“Very likely,” said Fred, “but the present 
question is what we’re going to do to-night.” 

“We must make the best camp we can in the 
snow,” remarked Maurice.” 

“I don’t see how we’ll cut wood without an 
axe,” said Peter. “It’s going to be a savage 
cold night. We have no blankets, either. Lucky 
we shot those partridges.” 

But when they came to the spot where they 
had dropped the partridges, a fresh disappoint- 
ment awaited them. The famished sledge dogs 
had found them. There was nothing left of the 


90 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


fourteen grouse except a litter of feathers and 
a few blood-stains on the snow. 

Their night was to be supperless as well as 
cold, it seemed. Darkness was already falling, 
with the weird desolation that the winter night 
always brings down on the wilderness. It had 
been always impressive, but now, as they 
faced the night without food or shelter, it was 
appalling. 

Destitute of an axe, they would have to make 
a camp where they could find fuel, and they 
scattered to look for it. It was rapidly grow- 
ing too dark to search, but Fred presently came 
upon a large, dead spruce, lying half buried in 
snow, but spiked thickly with dry branches. 
He was breaking these off by the armfuls 
when the other boys came up in answer to his 
calls. 

They trampled down the snow, gathered 
birch bark and spruce splinters, and laid the 
kindling against the big back log. Maurice set 
about pulling twigs for a couch, in case the 
temperature permitted them to sleep. 

“How about matches? I haven’t one on 
me,” said Fred, in sudden anxiety. 

Macgregor discovered four rather damp ones 
in his pockets; Maurice had a dozen or more, 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 91 

but the snow had got into his pocket, and wet 
them. 

They used up five matches in lighting the 
fire, but finally the birch bark flared up, 
curling, and the spruce twigs began to 
crackle. 

They were sure, at any rate, of a fire, and 
this little success raised their spirits wonder- 
fully. They started at once to bring in all the 
loose wood they could find; but it proved to be 
little, for snow covered everything except the 
largest logs. However, they counted on the 
big spruce trunk to burn all night. 

Without an axe, it was impossible to build 
any sort of shelter; so they sat down close 
beside the fire, and huddled together to escape 
the cold, which was growing hourly more 
piercing. 

In spite of all their efforts, the fire was a 
poor one. The spruce trunk proved rotten and 
damp, and merely smouldered and smoked. 
The dead branches went off in a rapid flame, 
and they had to economize them to make them 
last the night out. 

That was a terrible night. The temperature 
must have gone far below zero. A foot away 
from the fire, they could hardly feel its warmth ; 


92 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


their backs and feet were numb, and their 
faces smoked and scorching. 

Two of the boys were tired with a long snow- 
shoe tramp, and all of them were hungry. 
Macgregor’s feet were still far from being in 
a condition to stand further exposure; they 
would have frozen again easily, and he kept 
them as close to the wretched fire as possible. 
Sleep was out of the question, for they would 
have frozen to death at six feet away from the 
fire. They sat with their arms round each 
other, as close to the blaze as possible, and 
turned now their faces and now their backs to 
the warmth. 

Fortunately, there was no wind. About 
midnight a pallid moon came up behind light 
clouds. Far in the woods they heard strange, 
lugubrious noises, moans, hootings, and once 
a shrill, savage scream. 

Now and then they talked, but they were 
too miserable from the cold to say much. In 
spite of the cold, they grew drowsy. Fred 
could have gone dead asleep if he had allowed 
himself to. He got up, stamped, and engaged 
in a rather spiritless bout of wrestling with 
Peter. Then they all straggled off to try to 
find more wood. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


93 


Finally, that night of horror wore itself 
away. The light of a pale, cold dawn began 
to show. 

Feeling twenty years older, they scattered to 
bring wood again. They built up the fire to a 
roaring blaze that gave some real warmth. 

“Are n’t those fellows likely to make off the 
first thing this morning, and take all our outfit 
with them? ” said Maurice. 

“They’re almost certain to. We must keep 
watch on the cabin,” said Fred. 

“We must hope they don’t,” added Peter. 
“We’d have to follow them — follow them till 
we dropped or captured them. For they’d be 
taking away our lives with them.” 

In view of this danger, they sent Maurice at 
once to reconnoiter the place, which was not 
more than a quarter of a mile distant. He 
was gone nearly half an hour, and on his re- 
turn reported that smoke was rising from the 
cabin, but that there were no signs that the 
men intended to depart. 

And he had had a stroke of luck. A couple 
of partridges had flown up and perched stupidly 
on a log, so close to him that he had been able 
to knock one of them over with a cleverly 
thrown club. 


94 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


In less than a minute that partridge’s feath- 
ers were scattered on the snow, and it was cut 
up and roasting on sharp sticks before the fire. 
Too ravenous to wait until it was thoroughly 
cooked, the boys began to eat it, but Maurice 
made a wry face at his second mouthful. 

“No salt!” he remarked. 

The half -cooked flesh was nauseous without 
salt, and hungry though they were, they got 
it down with difficulty. It did them good, 
however, and they all felt more capable of 
facing the situation. 

“The first thing we must do,” said Peter, 
“ is to find a better camping-place, put up some 
sort of shelter, and gather plenty of wood.” 

“Why, you don’t expect to live like this 
long?” cried Fred, looking startled. 

“It’s hard to say. You know we’re fearfully 
handicapped. Our only chance is to get those 
fellows off their guard, for if we strike once 
and fail, we’ll probably never get another 
chance. We must lie low, and make them think 
that we’ve gone away, or that we’re dead. 
We’ll put our new camp half a mile away, 
or more, and one of us must keep watch near 
the cabin from sunrise to sunset.” 

N It sounded disheartening, but they could 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


95 


think of no other plan. Eventually, Maurice 
went to stand guard, while Fred and Macgregor 
searched for a camp-site. 

They could not find what they wanted. Dead 
timber in any quantity was scarce. At the end 
of a couple of hours Fred went to relieve Mau- 
rice, and found him walking round and round 
a tree in order to keep from freezing. 

“I thought I might get a chance to collar 
the axe,” said Maurice, with chattering teeth. 
“But they’ve carried it inside. They’ve taken 
in the rest of the venison, too, and they’ve 
even got the dogs inside the shanty. Afraid 
we’d shoot them, I suppose.” 

Maurice tramped off to aid Peter in his search, 
while Fred stamped about in the trees. No 
one was in sight about the hut, but after a 
long time one of the French Canadians came 
out and went down to the river with a pail for 
water. 

It made Fred’s blood boil to think of the 
warmth and comfort in that cabin, from which 
they had been so treacherously turned out. 
He puzzled his brain to devise some plan of 
retaliation, but he could think of nothing 
except setting fire to the place, and that would 
destroy the supplies of friend and foe alike. 


96 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


His feet grew numb, and he adopted Mau- 
rice’s plan of running round in a circle. He 
fancied that his ears and nose were frosted, 
and he rubbed them with snow. A long time 
passed; he wondered what had become of his 
companions. It was nearly noon when Mau- 
rice hurried up with his face full of consterna- 
tion. “The fire is out,” he said, “and we’ve 
used the last match!” 


CHAPTER VI 


At this crushing news, Fred left his post 
and went back with Maurice, who explained 
what had happened. 

They had found a good camping-ground, 
where wood was abundant, and had tried to 
light a fire. But the remaining matches proved 
to have been badly dampened ; the heads were 
pasty or entirely soaked off. One by one they 
fizzled and went out. As a last hope, Maurice 
had hurried back to their night camp for fire, 
only to find that the wet log had smouldered 
down and gone dead out. 

The spot was about two thirds of a mile 
away, south from the river. A great windrow 
of hemlocks and jack-pines had fallen together, 
and afforded plenty of wood. On one of the 
logs sat Macgregor, with his elbows on his 
knees, and his chin in his hands, the picture 
of despair; and at his feet was a litter of bark 
and kindling, and a dozen burnt matches. 

They all sat down together in silence, and 
nobody found a word of comfort. 

It was a brilliantly clear day, but the tern- 


98 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


perature had certainly not risen to zero, and a 
slight, cutting wind blew from the west. The 
sun shone in an icy blue sky, but there was no 
heat in its rays. 

“If we only had a cartridge,” said Fred, 
“we might make a fire with the gun flash.” 

They all made another vain search of their 
pockets, in the faint hope of finding a cartridge 
or an overlooked match head. 

“If we don’t find some way to make a 
fire before sunset,” said Macgregor gloomily, 
“we’ll have to attack the cabin to-night. I 
really don’t believe we could live through a 
night without fire, with nothing to eat, espe- 
cially as we had no sleep last night.” 

“Surely if we went up to the cabin, they’d 
give us some fire,” Maurice protested. “They 
would n’t let us die in the snow.” 

“That’s just what they count on us to do,” 
said the Scotchman bitterly. 

No one said anything about renewing the 
guard on the cabin. Nothing seemed to mat- 
ter much — nothing except the cold. The 
morsels of half-raw food they had eaten that 
morning did not keep them from being raven- 
ously hungry again, and an empty stomach is 
poor protection against Arctic cold. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


99 


Like the rest of them, Fred was heavily clad, 
but the cold seemed to find his skin as if he 
were naked. He began to feel numb to the 
bone, lethargic, incapable of moving. Then he 
realized his danger, forced himself awake, and 
tried to think of some expedient for making 
a fire. 

Flints could not be found under three feet of 
snow. A burning-glass — if they only had one! 
It should have been included in the outfit. 

And then an idea flashed upon him. He 
jumped up suddenly. 

“Wait here for me, fellows !” he cried. 

He rushed off toward the river, and came 
back in a few minutes with a piece of clear 
ice, almost as large as his palm, and an inch 
or two thick. He slipped off his mittens, and 
began to rub it between his hands, so as to 
melt it down with the heat of his skin. 

“See what it is? Burning-glass!” he ex- 
claimed. 

. “But you can’t make a burning-glass of 
ice!" said Maurice. 

“Why not? Anyhow, I’m going to try.” 

But before he had worked the ice long, he 
had to stop, for his hands seemed freezing. 
While he beat and rubbed them, Maurice, in- 


100 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


credulous but willing, took the lump of ice, 
and shaped it down while the heat lasted in 
his hands. He then passed it on to Macgregor, 
who in turn handed it to Fred again. He 
finally succeeded in melting and curving it 
roughly into the proper shape. 

He tried it on the back of his hand. An 
irregular but small and intensely hot spot of 
light concentrated itself there. 

“I do believe it will work!” Peter cried. 

They hastily collected a handful of fine, dry 
hair moss from the fir branches, and peeled 
filmy shreds of birch bark. Fred brought the 
“ glass ” to bear on the little heap. His numbed 
hands trembled so that he could hardly hold 
it still. For some time there was no result. 
Then a thin thread of smoke began to arise. 
The boys held their breath. The hair moss 
suddenly sparkled and flamed. A shred of 
bark caught. Peter interposed a large roll. 
It flared up. 

“Hurrah! We’ve got it!” cried Macgregor. 
“ Fred, you ’ve saved our lives, I do be- 
lieve.” 

They piled on twigs, branches, and heavy 
lumps of wood, and soon had a brisk fire going. 
Better still, they were now assured of having 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 101 


always the means of making one — at least, 
whenever the sun shone. 

The magical influence of the fire gave back 
to them a little of their cheerfulness. They 
warmed themselves thoroughly, and then 
started to have another look at the outlaws, 
and to see whether they could find any small 
game. For now that they no longer suffered 
from the cold, their stomachs cried loudly for 
food. 

Leaving the empty rifles by the fire, they 
armed themselves with clubs and poles for 
hunting, and had good hopes of being able to 
knock over a partridge or a hare. But the 
grouse seemed to have turned wild. They saw 
only two at a great distance. No hares showed 
themselves, nor could they find any trace of 
porcupines on the trees. 

Skulking within sight of the cabin, they 
perceived one of the Frenchmen carrying in 
logs of wood for the fire — some of those that 
Fred himself had cut. Mitchell stood by, smok- 
ing his pipe, with a rifle under his arm. Fred 
fancied he could smell frying venison as the 
door was opened. 

Plainly the outlaws were on the alert still. 
The boys crouched, unseen and unheard, 


102 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


among the hemlocks; but if they had been 
armed, they could easily have picked off the two 
men at the door. And they had come to such 
a state of rage and desperation that they would 
very likely have done it. 

They found no comfort in the fact that the 
robbers showed no inclination to leave the 
place. The boys were perplexed at their stay- 
ing, but probably the men had no reason to 
hurry, and, finding themselves comfortably 
placed, had decided to remain where they 
were while the extreme cold snap lasted. 

In spite of the cold, the boys remained on 
watch for some time after the men had gone 
indoors. Suddenly Peter laid his hand on 
Fred’s shoulder, and nodded backward. 

A deer had come out of the thickets within 
thirty yards of where they lay, — a fine, fat 
buck, — and stood looking uneasily, sniffing, 
and cocking its ears in their direction. Then, 
without showing any particular alarm, it 
walked on, and passing within twenty yards 
of them, disappeared again. 

They had to let it go; it was perhaps the 
cfuelest moment they had lived through. 

Deer might be out of the question, but 
if they were to keep alive, it was absolutely 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 103 


necessary that they should find something, 
and they separated in order to look for small 
game. 

In the course of an hour or two they all 
straggled back to the camp fire, half frozen 
and empty-handed. Macgregor indeed had 
seen a partridge, but his muscles had been so 
benumbed that he missed his throw. 

After warming themselves, they made an- 
other expedition — all but Maurice, who had 
neuralgic pains in his face, and who remained 
by the fire. But again Peter and Fred came 
back without game. 

The sun had set by this time, and it was 
hopeless to try again. A hungry night was in- 
evitable, but they tried so to arrange matters 
that at any rate they would be warm. They 
gathered all the wood that they could break 
off or lift. Then with their snowshoes they 
dug down to the ground, heaping the snow up 
in a rampart behind them, and piled in balsam 
twigs, and trusted that in this pit they would 
be able to sleep. 

It grew dark rapidly, and the wind rose. 
The fire, flaring and smoking, drove smoke 
and sparks into their faces until their eyes 
streamed. It made the leeward side of the 


104 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 

fire almost unbearable, whereas the windward 
side was freezingly cold. 

The temperature was perhaps not quite so 
low as the night before, but the gale made it far 
more disagreeable. Regardless of smoke and 
sparks, they had to sit as near the fire as they 
dared, or risk freezing. Sleep was impossible. 

All three of them were faint and sick with 
starvation, but the plight of Maurice was the 
most wretched. His neuralgia had grown 
agonizing; his face was badly swollen, and he 
sat with his head buried in his arms, and 
his inflamed cheek turned to the heat. 

Much as they sympathized with him, they 
could do nothing to relieve him, except to try 
to keep up the fire. This task caused them 
endless trouble. The high wind made it burn 
furiously fast, and the small branches they 
had gathered were licked up like magic. They 
had thought there was enough fuel for the 
night, but soon after midnight Fred and Peter 
were foraging about in the deep snow and the 
storm for a fresh supply. 

Toward morning their endurance broke 
down. They piled on all the rest of the wood, 
and went to sleep huddled up by the fire, 
reckless whether they froze or not. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 105 


Fred was awakened from a painful and un- 
easy slumber by Peter’s shaking his arm. 

“Your ears are frozen,” the Scotchman was 
saying. “Rub them with snow at once.” 

While asleep, Fred had fallen back beyond 
the range of heat. It was broad daylight, and 
snowing fast. The fire was low. All of them 
were covered with white, and Maurice was 
still asleep, sitting up, with his head fallen 
forward on his knees. 

Never in his life did Fred feel so unwilling 
to move. He did not feel cold; he hardly felt 
anything. All he wanted was to stay as he 
was and be let alone. 

But Macgregor insisted on rousing him, 
dragged him up, protesting, and rubbed snow 
on his ears. Fred was very angry, but the 
scuffle set his blood moving again. His ears 
were not badly frozen, but the skin came off 
as he rubbed them. They bled, and the blood 
froze on as it ran, and made him a rather 
ghastly spectacle. 

Maurice was awakened by the disturbance, 
and sat up stiffly. He declared that his 
neuralgia was much better. 

They built up the fire again, and sat be- 
side it, shivering. Fred felt utterly incapable 


106 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


either of action or of thought, and even his 
hunger had grown numbed. Maurice obviously 
felt no better, and Macgregor, who seemed to 
retain a little energy, looked at them both with 
a face of the gravest concern. Presently he 
rose, put on his snowshoes, took a long pole, 
and started away with an air of determination. 

Maurice and Fred remained sitting by the 
fire in a sort of lethargy, and exchanged hardly 
a word. Macgregor was gone almost an hour; 
then he came back at a run, covered with 
snow, and carrying a dead hare. He skinned 
the animal, cleaned it, cut it into pieces, and 
set it to roast. At the odor of the roasting 
meat, the boys’ appetites revived, and they 
began to take the fragments from the spits 
before they were half cooked. The scorched, 
unsalted meat was even more tasteless and 
nauseating than that of the grouse, but they 
all bolted it voraciously, and washed it down 
by eating snow. 

Almost immediately afterward they were 
taken with distressing cramps and vomiting, 
which left both Maurice and Fred in a state 
of weak collapse. Macgregor suffered least, 
perhaps because he had eaten less incautiously. 
He alone bore the burden of the rest of that 





DRAGGED HIM UP, PROTESTING, AND RUBP.ED SNOW ON IIIS EARS 










NORTHERN DIAMONDS 107 


day. He brought wood, kept the fire up, and 
propped Fred and Maurice up on piles of hem- 
lock branches. There were some small pieces 
of the hare remaining, and he finally made 
the boys chew them, and swallow the juice. 
It seemed to do them good; at any rate, the 
nausea did not return. Then the Scotchman 
spoke. 

“Look here,” he said, “we’ve got to do it 
this very night — get back into the cabin, I 
mean. We’ve gone almost too far now, and 
by another day we’ll be too weak to move.” 

“But how’ll we do it, Peter?” asked Fred 
weakly. 

“There’s only one way. We’ll wait till after 
midnight, when they’ll be asleep, and then 
burst in the door, aim our rifles at them, and 
get hold of their guns before they can recover 
their wits.” 

“They’ll have the door barricaded. We’ll 
be shot down before we can break in.” 

“I know it’s a long chance, but we’re living 
by a succession of miracles as it is. It can’t 
last, and I’d as soon be shot as frozen to 
death. I’m most afraid of the dogs. They’ll 
make an awful uproar, and probably spring 
at us as soon as we get in.” 


108 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


As far as Fred was concerned, he felt ready 
for the attempt, or rather, perhaps, that it 
made no difference what he did. Maurice 
also assented, but their force seemed a piti- 
fully small one with which to oppose four able- 
bodied, well-armed men. 

It was then late in the afternoon. Peter 
began to work energetically at gathering wood 
enough to last until they should try their 
desperate chance, and Fred and Maurice tried 
to help him. It had stopped snowing and 
had cleared. The night promised to be in- 
tensely cold. 

Suddenly, faint and far, but very distinct, 
the sound of a rifle-shot resounded through 
the trees. They listened, and looked at one 
another. 

“One of those ruffians has gone hunting,” 
Maurice remarked. 

“So he has,” said Peter. “And see here,” 
he added, with a suddenly brightening face, 
“this gives us a chance. Let’s ambush that 
fellow as he comes in. We’ll knock him down 
and stun him. That’ll make one less against 
us, and we’ll have his rifle and cartridges. 
Perhaps he’ll have something to eat on him. 
Boys, it doubles our chances.” 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 109 

The plan did look promising. At any rate, 
it would, if successful, give them a firearm. 
The shot must have been fired fully a mile 
away; but they put on their snowshoes at 
once, and hastened in the direction of the 
cabin. 

The light was failing fast as they stopped 
about two hundred yards from the hut, try- 
ing to guess just where the returning hunter 
would pass. It was very still, and they 
would be able to hear his footsteps for a long 
way. 

But they waited for nearly half an hour, 
and the woods were dusky when at last their 
strained ears caught the regular creak, crunch, 
and shuffle of snowshoes in the distance. They 
were posted too far to the right, and they had 
to run fifty yards in order to cross the man’s 
path. There they crouched behind the hem- 
locks, in great fear lest their enemy had heard 
their steps. But in another minute they caught 
sight of him. The man was alone, muffled in 
a great capote , carrying a rifle over his shoul- 
der, and something on his back — possibly his 
game. His face was indistinguishable, but he 
looked like one of the French Canadians. 

On he came with a steady stride, now in 


110 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 

sight, and now concealed by the thickets. He 
passed within ten feet of the ambush where 
the boys crouched palpitating. 

“Now! Tackle him!” Macgregor cried. 


CHAPTER VII 


The three boys plunged at the man together. 
He stopped short, and made a motion to lower 
his rifle; but he was too late. The boys had 
fastened on him as wolves fasten on a deer. He 
uttered a single, stifled cry; then they all went 
down together in a mass of kicking snowshoes 
and struggling limbs. The hunter’s efforts were 
feeble, and the boys had no trouble in over- 
powering him. Fred pinioned his arms, and 
Maurice sat on his legs. 

Macgregor peered into the man’s face. 
“ Why, this is n’t one of that gang!” he cried. 

It had grown almost dark. Fred bent for- 
ward to look at the man. 

“ It ’s my brother ! ” he cried. “ It ’s Horace ! ” 

“What? It can’t be!” cried Peter and 
Maurice together. They let go their hold on 
their prisoner in order to look closer. 

“I declare, I believe it is!” said Macgregor, 
stupefied. 

It really was Horace Osborne, but he was 
almost unrecognizable in his muffling capote , 
long hair, and a three months’ growth of 


112 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


beard. He had no idea who had thus attacked 
him, and he was in a towering rage. 

“What do you mean by all this? Who are 
you, anyway?” he exclaimed, sitting up in 
the snow. Then he looked more closely at 
his brother, who was trying to say something, 
inarticulate, half laughing and half crying. 

“Fred!” he cried, in amazement. “Is that 
you? What on earth are you doing here? 
Who ’s that with you? Peter Macgregor — and 
Maurice Stark!” 

“We thought you might be dead!” Fred 
cried, and Peter and Maurice cut in alter- 
nately : — 

“Heard you were sick with smallpox — ” 

“Came up to find you — ” 

“Came in on skates, and — ” 

“A gang of outlaws turned us out of the 
cabin — ” 

“Found your diamonds.” 

“I don’t half understand it all,” said Hor- 
ace, “but I see that you fellows have acted 
like good friends. We can’t get in the cabin, 
you say? Well, you’ve a camp somewhere, 
have n’t you?” 

They started for the camp in the snow, and 
on the way Fred gave his brother a some- 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 113 

what incoherent account of what had taken 
place. 

“You fellows certainly have acted like 
friends to me — like brothers, rather!” said 
Horace. “ I ’ll never forget it, boys ! ” 

And he shook hands with them all round. 

“Not a bit!” said Maurice, in embarrass- 
ment. “We were hoping that you’d let us in 
on the ground floor of a diamond mine. Fred 
says there was a whole bagful of diamonds 
that you had hidden in the cabin. What do 
you suppose they’re worth?” 

“If they’re all diamonds, perhaps a hundred 
thousand dollars,” replied Horace. 

“Gracious!” gasped Maurice, and said no 
more. 

But Fred’s attention had been fixed on the 
pack that his brother carried. 

“What have you there, Horace?” he asked. 

“Grub. Bacon, hardtack, tea, cold boiled 
beans. Why, I never thought of it, but you 
must all be as hungry as wolves. Well, there ’s 
enough for a square meal here, anyhow, and 
to-morrow we ’ll find some way of getting those 
rascals out of the camp.” 

They built up the camp-fire, and Horace 
got out his provisions, together with a couple 


114 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


of partridges he had shot late that afternoon. 
But Macgregor, as medical adviser, refused to 
let them eat as much as they wanted. A little 
tea and a few mouthfuls of meat were all he 
permitted them to have; he promised, however, 
that they should have a full meal in a couple 
of hours. He took the same ration himself; 
but Horace ate heartily. 

“But where have you been since you left 
the cabin?” Fred asked. 

“At a lumber camp on the Abitibi, about 
forty miles from here,” Horace replied. “I’ve 
been convalescing.” 

“If we’d only known that there was any- 
thing of the sort so near,” remarked Peter, 
“we’d have made for it ourselves.” 

“I stumbled on it by chance. However, I’d 
better explain in detail. As you seem to have 
heard, I came sick to this trappers’ shack. I ’d 
been in an Indian camp a week before, on the 
Nottaway River, where they had had smallpox, 
but I’ve been vaccinated four or five times, 
and never dreamed of danger. I did n’t know 
what the matter with me was, in fact, till the 
red spots began to appear. 

“Of course the trappers were badly scared, 
especially after one of them caught the dis- 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 115 


ease and died. I can’t tell you how sorry I was 
for that death. I suppose I was n’t to blame, 
but I felt somehow responsible. 

“The Indian cleared out, and I couldn’t 
blame him. But I could n’t afford to let the 
third man go. I was over the worst of it by 
that time, but I was as weak as a kitten, and 
could hardly feed myself. If he ’d deserted me 
I should have died. I offered him any sum of 
money if he would stick to me, and told him 
that I’d shoot him if I saw any sign of his 
making off. 

“I could n’t have aimed straight enough to 
hit him at a yard just then, and I suppose he 
knew it. Anyhow, he disappeared one morn- 
ing before I was awake. He did n’t take 
much with him except his gun and ammuni- 
tion. 

“I was gaining strength fast, and I was able 
to stagger about a little. I could get water, and 
there was some grub in the shack. I knew 
that I must get out at once, lest snow should 
come. I stayed four days; then I took what 
grub I could carry, my rifle and a dozen car- 
tridges, and started. I left all my specimens, 
notebooks and everything, for I did n’t dare 
to carry an ounce more than I could help.” 


116 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“But the diamonds? They did n’t weigh 
many ounces,” interrupted Maurice. 

“I struck for the Abitibi,” went on Horace, 
paying no attention to the question, “and I 
was so weak that I could n’t make much speed. 
I had been out five days, and my grub was 
pretty nearly gone, when I stumbled into the 
lumbermen. They treated me like real Samar- 
itans, took me in and fed me, and I’ve been 
there convalescing ever since. Day before yes- 
terday I started back here to get my things. 
I had to travel slowly, for I ’m not overstrong 
yet, and I was hurrying on to get to the cabin 
to-night when you pounced on me.” 

“If you had only taken the diamonds with 
you!” Fred lamented. 

“I did,” said Horace. He looked at the 
boys with a smile, and then went on : — 

“Those stones, my boy, that you saw in the 
cabin are n’t diamonds. They are quartz crys- 
tals and rather curious garnets, worth a few 
dollars at the most. Here are the diamonds!” 

He took a small leather pouch from an inner 
pocket; the boys jumped up in excitement to 
look. From the pouch he took a small paper 
package, unfolded it, and revealed nine small 
lumps, which ranged in size from a small shot 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 117 


to a large pea. They looked like lumps of 
gum arabic, but their edges and angles re- 
flected brilliant sparks in the firelight. 

“Those little things? Are they diamonds?’’ 
cried Fred, in some disappointment. 

“Little things? Why, if they were all per- 
fect stones, they’d be worth a small fortune. 
Unfortunately, the biggest has a flaw in it that 
you can see even without cutting it, and some 
of the others are yellowish and off color. It 
will take an expert to say what they ’re worth. 
But the great triumph is to have found dia- 
monds up here at all.” 

“Yes, and there must be more where these 
came from,” said Maurice, brightening. “If 
you’ve discovered the beds — ” 

“I haven’t, though,” Horace returned. 
“Three of these stones I bought from a camp 
of Ojibwas. The rest I found in the gravel 
of the creek-beds, mostly along the Nottaway 
River, but none of them within a quarter of 
a mile of another. Whenever I thought the 
gravel looked promising, I sifted some of it. 
But I did n’t find a trace of the blue soil that 
always forms the diamond-beds; if there are 
diamond-beds up here, they must be somewhere 
beyond the region that we have explored.” 


118 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“But they must be here somewhere,” cried 
Peter, “and there must be more diamonds 
where you found those! I’ll certainly come 
up here next summer and try my own 
luck.” 

“I’ve thought of doing so myself; that is, if 
this lot turns out to be any good. But getting 
back to town is the present problem, and we’ve 
got to consider how to recapture the cabin and 
your outfit of supplies.” 

“But not before we eat again,” said Fred. 

Macgregor, who was as famished as any of 
them, consented, and they prepared such a 
banquet as the three castaways had not seen 
since they left the cabin. It almost exhausted 
the supplies that Horace had brought, but it 
did them all a great deal of good. With a new 
feeling of being able to grapple with the prob- 
lem, they settled down to consider the question 
of war. 

“We might set fire to the cabin,” Fred sug- 
gested, “and try to capture the fellows when 
they rush out.” 

“Out of the question,” declared Peter, “for, 
even if it worked, the provisions would be 
burned up. I had thought of stopping up their 
chimney during the night. The smoke would 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 119 


suffocate them in their sleep, and we could go 
in and drag them out insensible.” 

“I am afraid it would waken them first,” said 
Horace. “We’d have them coming out with 
rifles. Now I’d been thinking that if we only 
had some of your formaldehyde fumigator we 
could get them under control very easily.” 

“So we could. A can of that stuff let through 
the roof would put them into a dead stupor 
without waking them. The only risk would 
be that of killing them all outright. There 
was a can of it left, too, but it’s in the cabin.” 

“No, it is n’t!” cried Fred. “I put it out- 
side in a hollow tree, so as not to have the stuff 
in the house. I could get it in ten minutes.” 

“Fred, you’re a diamond yourself!” Peter 
exclaimed. “If it’s as you say, we’ll have 
them out of that cabin in a jiffy.” 

“Shall we try it to-night?” Maurice asked. 

“Why not? It’s nearly midnight, and they 
must be asleep,” said Horace. “I’ve no fancy 
for spending another night and day shivering 
here in the snow. Besides, we’re out of grub.” 

After some consultation, they put on their 
snowshoes and tramped off toward the cabin. 
It was intensely cold, and very still and clear; 
a brilliant moon had come up over the pines. 


120 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 

Fred easily found the hollow tree in which he 
had hidden the disinfectant, and came back 
with the apparatus. There was an unopened 
tin of formaldehyde complete with its little 
lamp almost full of spirit. 

For some time they reconnoitered the cabin 
cautiously. A faint glow shone through the 
skin window, but no sound either of man or 
dog could be heard within. 

It would not be possible to introduce the 
fumigator through the door or window, and if 
it were lowered down the chimney, the draft 
would carry the gas out again. But Maurice 
recollected the hole he had patched in the roof; 
it could easily be opened again. He volun- 
teered to set the “smoker” going. 

This was really the most dangerous part of 
the undertaking, for a slight sound might bring 
out the ruffians, who would probably shoot 
without much hesitation. Maurice took off 
his snowshoes, and carrying the fumigator, 
plunged through the drifts toward the cabin. 

Twenty yards away the party watched him 
from the thickets; Horace kept the door cov- 
ered with his rifle. The snow had drifted so 
deep that Maurice climbed easily to the roof, 
crawled up the slope on hands and knees, 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 121 

groped about, and began to scrape away the 
snow. 

A moment later, he drew out the deer-hide 
patch, peered down the hole, and then waved 
his hand reassuringly toward the woods. He 
struck a match, lighted the spirit lamp, and 
then lowered the can cautiously by a string 
about a yard long. 

In another minute he was back with his 
friends. “They’re dead asleep,” he said, joy- 
fully. “I could hear them snore. The formal- 
dehyde began to smell strong before I let it 
down. How long shall we leave it?” 

“We don’t want to kill them,” said Horace. 

“No danger,” Peter remarked. “The draft 
from the big chimney will keep clearing the 
air. I’d leave it till all the stuff is vapor- 
ized — say, a couple of hours. The only thing 
I dread is that some one may wake up; but 
then, he would n’t know what the smell was, 
and the spirit flame is so pale that it ’s almost 
invisible.” 

They watched the cabin intently. All re- 
mained deathly quiet. It was very cold as 
they crouched there in the snow. Horace kept 
his rifle ready, but finally his vigilance slack- 
ened. They walked about to keep from freez- 


122 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


ing, talked in whispers, and still watched the 
silent hut. 

Suddenly Horace clutched Fred’s arm. 
“Look!” he cried. “The cabin’s on fire! ” 


CHAPTER VIII 


A thin stream of smoke was rising from 
the hole in the roof of the cabin. From the 
chimney volumes of vapor had suddenly be- 
gun to pour out into the moonlight. The dim 
glow at the window now and then flared up 
brightly. 

4 4 That spirit lamp must have set fire to 
something. Those men will be burned to death. 
Come, we must try to get them out!” Horace 
cried. 

They rushed together to the cabin door. 
It was barricaded on the inside; they battered 
it with kicks and blows for a good half-min- 
ute, and at last it yielded. 

A gush of smoke and suffocating fumes 
burst out into their faces, and the boys stag- 
gered back. The inside of the cabin appeared 
to be all in flames, but it was so obscured by 
smoke that they could see nothing clearly. 

With the opening of the door the fire seemed 
to burn more fiercely. It seemed impossible 
that anything could be alive in that place; but 
Fred shut his eyes and dashed blindly in. 


124 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


He stumbled over the body of a dog, and 
kicked it outside the door. Choking with the 
smoke and the formaldehyde fumes, he took 
another step, and his foot struck something 
soft; it was the body of a man. 

Fred stooped and tried to pick the body up 
by the shoulders. Suddenly through the smoke 
Peter appeared at his side, and helped him; 
together they got the man out and laid him 
down on the snow. He was one of the French 
Canadians, apparently lifeless. 

“Is he dead?” gasped Fred to Macgregor, 
who bent over the prostrate form. 

The medical student peered under the 
man’s eyelids, and felt his wrist. “No,” he 
said, “he’ll come round all right in the fresh 
air. It’s the smoke more than the gas.” 

Horace came out at that moment, dragging 
Mitchell’s limp body. The red-bearded ruffian 
was alive, but unconscious; the boys placed 
him on the snow beside his companion. Then 
all four of them rushed into the cabin together, 
and succeeded in getting out the remaining 
two French Canadians. 

“Now the dogs! We must get them out!” 
cried Peter. That was not hard to do, for the 
animals were lying close to the door. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 125 


The strong draft from the door to the 
chimney had by this time cleared the atmos- 
phere a good deal, and the boys saw that the 
fire was burning chiefly among the couches 
of balsam boughs. The spirit lamp must have 
scorched through the cord by which it hung, 
and dropped into a heap of dry twigs. 

The boys had no means of putting the fire 
out; the immediate need was to rescue the 
provisions. They rushed in again, and each 
dragged out an armful of supplies. They took 
a breath of fresh air, and then hastened in 
again. Fred was reaching for a slab of bacon, 
when suddenly something exploded almost 
under his hand. 

He jumped back, almost fancying he had 
been shot at. Crack / crack ! bang ! went several 
other reports in quick succession, and this 
time he realized what it must be. 

“Run! The ammunition’s going off!” he 
shouted, and rushed for the open; as he ran, 
however, he caught up the piece of bacon. 

Some of the rifle cartridges were exploding, 
one by one, and then two or three together, 
and suddenly, with a tremendous bang, a 
whole box seemed to go off. 

Then the firing ceased, and after a short 


126 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


interval, the boys set to work again to get 
out more provisions. The cabin was stifling 
now from powder smoke, but they got what 
they could lay their hands on — a bag of 
flour, a quantity of canned stuff, a kettle, a 
rifle; soon a great heap of rescued supplies 
lay on the snow outside. 

The flames, unable to ignite the solid logs 
of the cabin, were now dying; evidently they 
would soon burn themselves out. 

Mitchell at this moment gave signs of re- 
turning life. He opened his eyes, stirred, and 
began to cough violently. They placed him in 
a more comfortable position, and at the same 
time took the precaution of tying his wrists 
and ankles securely with strips of deer-hide. 
The man seemed dazed; he looked at the boys 
in amazement, and did not utter a word. 

Two of the French Canadians were also 
reviving, and the boys tied them up in the 
same way. The fourth was in bad shape, and 
it took vigorous rubbling to restore him to 
consciousness: if he had been neglected a lit- 
tle longer he might have died. 

They laid the captives out in a row on a pile 
of hemlock branches, and lighted a roaring fire 
to keep them from freezing. Horace then went 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 127 


through Mitchell’s pockets, and recovered the 
sack of stones that Fred had seen. He poured 
the glittering crystals into his hand, while 
Mitchell looked on in black disappointment. 

“My friend,” said Horace, “you’ve taken 
a vast amount of trouble, risked committing 
murder, and almost lost your own life for these 
pebbles. Here, I’ll give them to you.” He 
poured the crystals back into the pouch, and 
then flung the sack into the man’s lap. 

The outlaw looked utterly bewildered. 

“Ain’t them diamonds?” he exclaimed. 

“Fool’s diamonds,” Horace replied. “Maybe 
you can get five dollars for the lot. If they were 
real diamonds, you might be a millionaire now.” 

Mitchell was evidently convinced, for he 
swore bitterly. 

“I’m curious to know,” Horace said, “how 
you came to hear that you might expect to 
find diamonds hereabouts?” 

“One of these breeds,” said Mitchell sul- 
lenly, “got it from a brother of his down by 
Hickson that a prospector had died here with 
a pocketful of shiny stones that he’d picked 
up. I’ve prospected some myself. I thought 
what these stones likely was, and I got to- 
gether this crowd, and — ” 


128 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“We know the rest,” said Peter. “You 
came on the same false scent that we did.” 
Then he turned to Horace, and whispered, 
“What in the world are we going to do with 
these fellows?” 

Horace wrinkled his brows in perplexity, 
and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. 

But whatever they did, they must first of all 
sleep. The fire in the cabin had indeed burned 
out, but the place was so charred and smoky 
as to be uninhabitable; so they built a huge 
camp-fire of logs on the snow. Here they all 
passed the night, — there was not much left of 
it, — and Peter, Fred, and Maurice took turns 
in staying awake in order to watch the pris- 
oners. 

The next morning the boys prepared a great 
breakfast from the recaptured provisions. They 
released the right hands of the captives, to 
enable them to eat; the men showed no hostile 
spirit. Mitchell only was sullen, as usual; the 
three French Canadians chattered gayly; they 
had quite recovered from their suffocation. 
Four of the dogs were lively, too; but one was 
dead. 

After breakfast the boys inspected the cabin, 
and carried out the rest of the supplies. Most 



FLUNG THE SACK INTO THE MAN’S LAP 















NORTHERN DIAMONDS 129 


of these were badly damaged. All the blankets 
had been destroyed; the rifles were charred 
about the stocks, but could still be used; the 
kettles and tinware were not much injured; 
but the boys found only one box of cartridges 
that had not exploded. Mitchell’s dog harness 
was burned to pieces. Both the sledges had 
been left outdoors, and were unhurt. 

As they looked over the outfit, the boys dis- 
cussed their plans. They agreed that they 
should start for home at once. They were all 
anxious to have the diamonds appraised, and 
there was not the slightest reason for remain- 
ing. But the question what to do with the 
prisoners perplexed them. They could not 
take them along, could not leave them bound, 
and did not dare to set them free and restore 
their weapons. 

Finally, however, the boys found a way out 
of the difficulty. They divided the provisions 
and ammunition into two equal parts, and 
loaded their toboggan with one of them. Peter 
then cut the four men loose. 

“We’ll treat you better than you did us,” 
he said. “We’re leaving you half the grub, 
and there are some old deerskins here from 
which you can make a new dog harness. We’ll 


130 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


carry your snowshoes with us for two miles 
down the river, and leave them there. We’ll 
carry your rifles three miles farther, and leave 
them in a conspicuous place, too.” 

Then the boys set out on their homeward 
journey. One of the Frenchmen immediately 
started after them in order to pick up the 
snowshoes and the rifles, but the boys soon 
left him far behind. They saw no more of any 
of the outlaw gang, although, for fear of an 
attack, they kept watch for the next two nights 
in camp. 

None of the boys were in condition for fast 
travel, and the question of supplies was a 
serious one. Horace thought it best to make 
straight for the lumber camp where he had been 
so kindly received, and they reached it on the 
third day. Here they spent a couple of days 
in rest and recuperation, and were lucky 
enough to be able to buy enough beans, flour, 
and bacon to last them to the railway. Again 
they set off, and, after four days of hard tramp- 
ing in bitter cold weather, they heard the 
whistle of a train, faint and far away through 
the trees. 

They all yelled with joy. It was like a voice 
from home. They began to run, and in a short 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 131 


time they came to iron rails running north 
and south through the snowy forest. Following 
up the line, they found themselves at Ring- 
wood, three stations north of Waverley, where 
they had gone in. 

The next train took them down to that point, 
and they went back to the hotel, recovered 
their suit-cases, and put on town clothes again. 
It seemed a long time since they had passed 
that way before, and collars and cuffs were 
hard to wear. A great many curious eyes fol- 
lowed them about the little hotel. 

“Find any gold?” the landlord asked them, 
in an offhand manner. 

“No,” said Maurice. If he had inquired 
about diamonds, the boys would have been 
puzzled what to say. 

For the last time they packed their dunnage 
sacks on the battered toboggan, and shipped 
it to the city. They traveled on the same 
train themselves, and were in Toronto the 
next morning. 

The boys parted with hearty farewells — 
Maurice going home, Macgregor to his rooms, 
and Horace accompanying Fred to his board- 
ing-house, where he intended to find quarters 
for himself. 


132 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“And now for the great question!” said 
Horace, when they were once indoors. “Are 
the diamonds worth anything, or are they not? 
I can’t think of anything else till I find out.” 

“Why, I thought you were sure — ” began 
Fred. 

“So I am — in a general sort of way. But 
I’m not a diamond expert, and I may be de- 
ceived. It’s just possible that the things may 
not be real diamonds at all. 

“But don’t worry,” he added, seeing his 
brother’s startled face. “I’m pretty sure they 
’re all right. But I ’m going to take them at 
once to Wilson & Keith’s and get them ap- 
praised. They’re the best diamond firm in 
the city, and they’ll treat me honestly.” 

Horace dressed himself very carefully, took 
his little sack of jewels, and departed. He 
was gone fully three hours, and Fred waited 
in almost sickening impatience. At last he 
heard Horace’s step on the stairs, and rushed 
out to meet him. 

“What luck?” he cried eagerly. 

“S-sh!” said Horace, drawing him back 
into the room. “It’s all right. They’re dia- 
monds!” 

“Hurrah!” Fred shouted wildly. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 133 


“They were awfully keen to know where I 
got them, but of course I would n’t tell, ex- 
cept that it was in Ontario. They would have 
bought the lot, I think, but I was n’t anxious 
to sell at once. They wanted me to make a 
price, and I wanted them to make an offer, and 
both of us were afraid, I guess. However, 
they’re going to take care of the stones for 
me and think it over.” 

“We must tell the other boys!” exclaimed 
Fred. “Can you make the slightest guess at 
what the stones are worth?” 

“Hardly — at present. Maybe a thousand 
or two. Three of them are too small to be of 
any use at all, too small to be cut. The biggest 
has a bad flaw in it; it could be used only for 
cutting up into what they call ‘commercial 
diamonds,’ for watch-movements, and such 
things. Yes, give Peter and Maurice the news, 
certainly, but do it by word of mouth. Don’t 
’phone them. You don’t know who may be 
listening. 

“And be sure to warn them to keep the whole 
affair the closest kind of secret. Wilson & Keith 
are going to exhibit the stones in their show 
window, and you’ve no idea what an excite- 
ment will be stirred up. We’ll all be watched. 


134 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


People will try in every possible way to find 
out where we got them. The newspapers will 
be after the story, and there’ll be all kinds of 
underhand tricks to trap us into letting out 
something. Not that it would do much good, 
for none of you know enough to be dangerous, 
but we don’t want a dozen parties going up 
the Nottaway River next spring. We’re going 
there ourselves.” 

Fred promised secrecy, and presently found 
that his brother had hardly exaggerated the 
sensation caused by the little pile of dull stones 
on a square of black velvet in the jeweler’s 
window, labeled “Canadian Diamonds.” The 
newspapers were unremitting; Horace gave 
them a brief and circumspect interview, and 
thenceforth refused to add another word to his 
statement. He was besieged with inquiries. 
He had all sorts of proposals made to him by 
miners and mining firms. One group of capi- 
talists made him an offer that he thought good 
enough to consider for a day, but he ultimately 
rejected it. 

Fred had his share of glory too, as the brother 
of the diamond finder. It leaked out that 
Maurice and Peter had also been on the ex- 
pedition, and they were so pestered with in- 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 135 


quiries and interviewers that it seriously in- 
terfered with their collegiate work. But by 
degrees the excitement wore off, for lack of 
anything further to feed upon. The diamonds 
were withdrawn from exhibition, and the 
jewelers at last made up their minds to offer 
Horace seven hundred dollars for the lot. 

It was rather a disappointing figure. Horace 
took his diamonds to Montreal and submitted 
them to two jewel experts there, who advised 
him that they were probably worth little more, 
in their uncut form. The cutting of them might 
develop flaws, or it might bring out unexpected 
luster; it was taking a chance. 

Returning to Toronto, he announced that 
he would take eight hundred and no less; and 
after some arguing Wilson & Keith consented 
to pay that price. The boys had a grand din- 
ner at a downtown restaurant that night to 
celebrate it. It was far from the fortune they 
had hoped to gain, but they still had great 
hopes of discovering that fortune. 

“It’s more than enough to cover the ex- 
penses of your trip into the woods this winter, 
and our next trip in the spring, too,” said 
Horace, “for of course this eight hundred is 
going to be divided equally between us.” 


136 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“Not a bit of it!” protested Mac. “You 
found the stones. They’re yours. We won’t 
take a cent of it, will we, Maurice?” 

“I should think not!” Maurice exclaimed. 

Horace tried to insist, but the two boys stood 
firm. At last he persuaded them to agree that 
the expenses of the expedition should be de- 
frayed out of the diamond money. As for their 
coming trip next season, the matter was left 
to be settled later. 

There was plenty of time to think of it, for 
it would be months before the woods would be 
open for prospecting. 


CHAPTER IX 


Nearly the whole winter was before them, 
but it was none too long a time to consider 
their plans. Horace had found diamonds, it 
is true, but they had been found miles apart, 
one at a time, in the river gravel. This is not 
the natural home of diamonds, which are 
always found native to the peculiar formation 
known in South Africa as “blue clay.” No- 
body had ever found a trace of blue clay in 
Ontario, yet Horace felt certain that the blue- 
clay beds must exist. They were the only thing 
worth looking for. To poke over the river 
gravel in hopes of finding a chance stone 
would be sheer waste of time. Hundreds of 
men had done it without lighting on a single 
diamond. 

Horace was a trained geologist, and that 
winter he spent much time in study, without 
saying a word even to Fred as to what he was 
meditating. He pored over geological sur- 
veys, and went to Ottawa to consult the depart- 
mental maps at the Legislative Library. By 
slow degrees he was working out a theory, and 


138 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


at last, one February evening, he came into 
his brother’s room. 

“Just look at this, Fred, and see what you 
think of it,” he remarked casually. 

It was a large pen-and-ink map, skillfully 
drawn, for Horace was a practiced map-maker. 

“It’s the country of the Abitibi and Mis- 
sanabie Rivers,” Horace explained. “These 
red crosses show where I found my diamonds 
— see, in theWhitefish River, the Smoke River, 
and another river that has n’t any name, so far 
as I know. Right here is the trappers’ cabin 
where you boys found me. My bones might 
have been up there now but for you, old 
boy!” 

And he thumped Fred’s back affectionately. 

“If you hadn’t come along when you did 
I ’m pretty certain our bones would be there, 
anyway,” said Fred. 

“Well, let’s hope we all saved one another. 
But see, most of these diamonds were found 
many miles apart. They did n’t grow where 
I found them. They must have been washed 
down, perhaps from the very headwaters of 
the river. Now look at the map. Do you see, 
all these three rivers rise in pretty much the 
same region.” 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 139 


“So they do,” said Fred, his eyes fixed on 
the paper. “Then you think — ” 

“The stones were probably all washed down 
from that region. The blue-clay beds, the 
diamond field, must be up there, somewhere 
within this black circle I’ve drawn.” 

Fred’s heart began to throb with excite- 
ment. 

“But some prospector would have hit on 
them before now,” he said. 

“I doubt if any prospector has ever gone 
in there. They say it’s one of the roughest 
bits of country in the North, and no mineral 
strikes have ever been made in that region. 
I ’ve never been up there myself. It ’s up in the 
hills, you see; the rivers are too broken for a 
canoe, and the ground is too rough to get over 
on foot, except in the winter. The O jib was 
hunt there in the winter, they say, and I dare 
say there’s plenty of game.” 

“But if it’s so rough to get into, how can 
we travel?” 

“Oh, often those bad places are not so bad 
when you get there. I ’d like to see the place 
I could n’t get into if there were diamonds 
there! We’ll get into it somehow, for the dia- 
mond-beds must surely be there if they’re 


140 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


anywhere. But there’s no doubt it’ll be a 
rough trip.” 

“Rough? What of that?” cried Fred. “If 
your theory is right we ’ll make our fortunes — 
millions, maybe! Of course you’ll let me go, 
won’t you? And Maurice, and Mac?” 

“I could n’t manage without you. But mind, 
not a word to anybody else!” 

They telephoned the other boys that day, 
and in the evening a meeting was held in Fred’s 
room, like the previous time when the first 
expedition had been so hurriedly planned. 
But this was to be a different affair, carefully 
thought out and equipped for all sorts of 
possibilities. 

“Of course you’ll both be able to go?” said 
Fred. 

“I certainly will,” answered Peter. “I’ve 
lost so much time this winter already, with our 
other trip, and then having my mind on the 
diamonds and dodging newspaper reporters 
and things, that I’ve got hopelessly behind. 
My laboratory work especially has gone all to 
pieces. I’m bound to fail on next summer’s 
exams, anyway, so I ’m going to let it slide and 
make the trip, on the chance that I’ll make 
such a fortune that I won’t have to practice 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 141 


medicine for a living at all. How about you, 
Maurice? ” 

“I wouldn’t miss it for anything — if I 
could help it,” Maurice replied. “ I don’t know, 
though, whether I can afford it.” 

Maurice’s parents were not in rich circum- 
stances, and Horace hastened to say — 

“I’m paying for this expedition, you know, 
out of the diamond money. There ’ll be plenty, 
and some to spare.” 

“Well, it is n’t exactly the cost,” said Mau- 
rice, “but my father is awfully anxious for 
me to make an honor pass next summer. I 
could n’t afford to fail, and have to take an- 
other year at the work. I don’t know, though, 
— I ’ll see. I ’d be awfully disappointed if I 
had to stay out of it.” 

Under the circumstances they could not 
urge him to say more. As for Horace and Fred, 
they had very few family ties. Their closest 
relatives were an aunt and uncle in Montreal. 
The trip was quite in the line of Horace’s pro- 
fession, and Fred did not mind resigning the post 
he held in the real estate office. The firm was 
shaky; it was not likely to continue in business 
much longer, and he would be likely to have 
to look for another position soon in any event. 


142 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


As they had feared, Maurice was obliged to 
announce his inability to go with them. His 
professors thought that an absence of two 
months would be a handicap that he could never 
make up. In the eyes of his parents the ex- 
pedition was no more than a hare-brained 
expedition into the woods, that would cost a 
whole year of collegiate work. To his bitter 
disappointment, he had to give it up. 

Fred and Macgregor at once began to train 
as if for an athletic contest. They took long 
cross-country runs in the snow and worked 
hard in the gymnasium. They introduced a 
new form of exercise that made their friends 
stare. They appeared on the indoor running 
track bent almost double; each carried on his 
back a sack of sawdust, held in place by a 
broad leather band that passed over the top 
of his forehead. Thus burdened they jogged 
round the track at a fast walk. 

They were the butt of many jokes before 
the other men at the gymnasium discovered the 
reason for this queer form of exercise. It had 
been Horace’s idea. He knew that there would 
be long portages where they would have to 
carry the supplies with a tumpline; and he also 
knew that nothing is so wearing on a novice. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 143 


Fred and Peter found it so. Strong as they 
were, they discovered that it brought a new 
set of muscles into play, and they had trouble 
in staggering over a mile with a fifty-pound 
pack; but they kept at it, and before the ex- 
pedition started, Fred could travel five miles 
with a hundred pounds, and big Macgregor 
could do even better. 

As soon as the ice on Toronto Bay broke up, 
they bought a large Peterboro canoe, which 
Horace inspected thoroughly. He was a skilled 
canoeman; Fred and Peter could also handle 
a paddle. When the ice went out of the Don 
and Humber Rivers, the boys began to prac- 
tice canoeing assiduously. The streams were 
running yellow and flooded, and they got more 
than one ducking, but it was all good training. 

They decided to start as soon as the North- 
ern rivers were navigable, for at that early sea- 
son they would escape the worst of the black- 
fly pest, and the smaller streams would be more 
easily traveled than when shallow in midsum- 
mer. Besides, they all felt anxious to get on 
the ground at once. But although the streams 
were free in Toronto, in the Far North winter 
held them locked. It was hard to wait; but 
not until May did Horace think it safe to start. 


144 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


Since Maurice was not going, the boys decided 
to take only one canoe. It was impossible to 
say how long they might be gone, but Horace 
made out a list of supplies for six weeks. It 
was rather a formidable list, and the outfit 
would be heavy to transport. They carried a 
tent and mosquito-bar, and a light spade and 
pick for prospecting the blue clay, besides 
Horace’s own regular outfit for mineralogical 
testing work. For weapons they decided upon 
a 44-caliber repeating rifle and a shotgun, with 
assorted loads of shells. It was not the season 
for hunting, but they wished to live on the 
country as far as possible to save their flour 
and pork. Fish should be abundant, however, 
and they took a steel rod with a varied stock 
of artificial flies and minnow-baits. 

It was warm weather, almost summery, 
when they took the northbound express in 
Toronto; but when Fred opened the car 
window the next morning, a biting cold air 
rushed in. Rough spruce woods lined the track, 
and here and there he saw patches of snow. 

It was almost noon when they got off at the 
station that was a favorite starting-point for 
prospectors. Here they had to spend two days, 
for Horace wished to engage Indian packers to 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 145 


help them portage over the Height of Land. 
As it was early in the season, they had their 
pick of men, and obtained three French half- 
breeds, who furnished their own canoe and 
supplies. 

The boys’ canoe and duffel sacks had come 
up by freight. All was ready at last. The next 
morning they put the canoes into the water; 
the paddles dipped, and the half-dozen houses 
of the village dropped out of sight behind the 
pines. 

The first week of that voyage was unevent- 
ful, except for hard work and considerable 
discomfort. It rained four days in the seven, 
and once it snowed a little. They were going 
upstream always, against a rushing current 
swollen with snow water. Sometimes they 
could paddle, more often they had to pole, and 
frequently they were forced either to carry, or 
else to wade and “ track” the canoes up the 
current. The nearer they came to the head 
of the river, the swifter and more broken the 
stream became. At last they could go no 
farther in the canoes. Then came the long 
portage. In order to reach the head of the 
Missanabie River, which flowed in the op- 
posite direction, they had to carry the canoe 


146 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


and over six hundred pounds of outfit for 
about twelve miles, across the Height of Land. 

Here they camped for one night. At day- 
light next morning they started over the long 
portage, heavily burdened, and before the first 
hour had passed they were thankful that they 
had brought along the half-breed packers, who 
strode along sturdily under a load that made 
Fred stare. It is only fair to say, though, that 
the half-breeds were almost equally surprised 
at the performance of the boys, for their pre- 
vious experience with city campers had not led 
them to expect anything in the way of weight- 
carrying. Thanks to their gymnasium prac- 
tice, however, Fred and Macgregor were able 
to travel under a sixty-pound load without 
actually collapsing. 

The trail was rough and wound up and down 
over rocky ridges, through tangles of swamp- 
alder and tamarack, but continually zigzagged 
up toward the hills. It was a chilly day; the 
streams had been rimmed with ice that morn- 
ing, but after a few miles the boys were drip- 
ping with perspiration. 

That was a killing march. If it had not 
been for their weeks of hard training the boys 
could never have stood up under it, and they 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 147 


had all they could do to reach the topmost 
ridge of the Height of Land by the middle of 
the afternoon. 

Fred slipped the tumpline from his head, 
slung the sixty-pound pack on the ground, 
and sat down heavily on the pack. 

“That part’s over, anyway!” he gasped. 

“There won’t be anything much rougher, 
old boy,” replied Horace, as he came up and 
threw off his own burden. 

Staggering through the underbrush, slipping 
on the wet, mossy stones of the slope, came a 
queer procession. In front was a bronze-faced 
half-breed, bent double, with the broad tump- 
line over the top of his head, and a mountain- 
ous pack of blankets and food supplies on his 
back. Behind him came two more half-breeds, 
each with a heavy pack of camp outfit. Mac- 
gregor brought up the rear; he carried a Peter- 
boro canoe upside down on his shoulders, and 
steadied it with his hands. 

They all sat down on the top of the hill 
to rest. The three white boys, although 
trained athletes, were pretty well at the end 
of their strength; but the half-breeds seemed 
little the worse for their labor. 

They were on the top of the Height of 


148 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


Land, which divides the flow of the rivers 
between the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay. 
Behind them was the long, undulating line of 
hills and valleys they had just crossed. 

Before them the land fell away sharply. In 
the clear May sunshine they could see for 
miles over the tree-tops until the dark green 
of the spruce and tamarack faded to a hazy 
blue. A great ridge showed a split face of gray 
granite; in the distance a lake glimmered. 

About two miles away to the northwest a 
yellowish-green strip showed here and there 
through the trees. It was a river — one of the 
tributaries of the Missanabie, which was to 
take them North. 

The descent on the other side of the ridge 
was almost as hard as the ascent had been. 
The northern slope was wet and rocky; in the 
hollows were deep banks of snow. The rocks 
were loosened by the frost, which made the 
footing dangerous. But it was only two miles 
now to the river, and they reached it in time 
to camp before dusk. The next morning they 
paid off the half-breeds, who returned over the 
ridges southward. The boys were left alone; 
the real expedition had begun. 

The work now looked easy, but dangerous. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 149 


The river was narrow, swollen; its tremendous 
current, roaring over rocks and rapids, would 
carry them along at a rapid pace. They would 
have to do some careful steering, however, 
if they did not wish to upset. 

As the most skillful canoeman, Horace took 
the stern; Macgregor sat in the bow, and Fred 
in the middle behind a huge pile of dunnage. 

For a quarter of a mile they shot down the 
river; then they had to land and make a fifty- 
yard carry. Another swift run in the canoe 
followed, and then another and longer por- 
tage. 

It was like that for about fifteen miles. Then 
they caught sight of wider water ahead, and 
the little river poured into a great, brown, 
swift-flowing stream a hundred yards wide. 
It was the Missanabie. 

During the rest of that day they ran over 
forty miles. The current carried them fast, 
and the river was so big and deep that it was 
seldom broken by dangerous rapids. 

The country grew lower and less hilly; it 
was covered with a rather stunted growth of 
spruce, tamarack, and birch. Ducks splashed 
up from the water as the canoe came in sight; 
and when the boys stopped to make camp for 


150 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


the night they found at the river’s edge the 
tracks of a moose. 

It was wintry cold in camp that night, and 
there was ice in the pools the next morning. 
Shortly after sunrise the boys launched the 
canoe again, and it was not much more than 
an hour later when a sound of roaring water 
began to grow loud in their ears. With vast 
commotion and foam a smaller stream swept 
into the Missanabie from the southwest. 

“Hurrah! I’ve been here before!” cried 
Horace. “It’s the Smoke River. Up here 
real work begins.” 

“And up here,” Peter said, gazing at the 
wild, swift stream, “is the diamond country.” 


CHAPTER X 


The mouth of the Smoke River was so rough 
that the boys could not enter it in the canoe; 
and the dense growth of birch and willow along 
the shores would make portaging difficult. 

“We’ll have to track the canoe up,” Hor- 
ace decided. 

They got out the “tracking-line” — a long, 
stout, half -inch rope — and attached one end of 
it to the bow of the canoe. Peter Macgregor 
harnessed himself to the other end, and started 
up the narrow, rocky strip of shore; Horace 
waded beside the canoe in order to fend her 
off the boulders. Fred, carrying the fire-arms 
and a few other articles that a wetting would 
have ruined, scrambled through the thickets. 

The water was icy cold, but it was never 
more than hip-deep. Fortunately, the very 
broken stretch of the river was only a hundred 
yards long; after that, they were able to pole for 
a mile or so, and once indeed, the stream broad- 
ened so much that they could use the paddles. 
Then came a precipitous cascade, then a diffi- 
cult carry, and then another stretch of poling. 


152 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


They had gone about five miles up the river 
when Horace, who had been watching the 
shores carefully, pointed to a tree and gave a 
shout. It was a large spruce, on the trunk of 
which was a blazed mark that looked less 
than a year old. 

“It’s my mark,” said Horace. “I made it 
last August. Right here I found one of the 
diamonds.” 

“We must stop and do some prospecting!” 
cried Fred. 

“No use,” replied his brother. “I pros- 
pected all round here myself, and for a mile 
or so up the river. I did n’t go any farther, 
but I’ve a notion that we’ll have to go nearly 
to the head of the river to find the country we 
want.” 

On they went, shoving the canoe against the 
current with the iron-shod canoe poles. They 
had all been looking up the kind of soil in 
which diamonds are usually found, and now 
they closely observed the eroded banks on 
both sides of the river. According to Horace’s 
theory, the river, or one of its tributary 
streams, must cut through the diamond-beds 
of blue clay. But as yet the shores showed 
nothing except ordinary sand and gravel. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 153 

Two miles farther the river broadened into 
a long, narrow lake, surrounded by low spruce- 
clad hills and edged with sprouting lily-pads. 
It was a great relief to the boys to be able to 
paddle, and they dashed rapidly to the head 
of the lake. There, rapids and a long carry 
confronted them ! They had made little more 
than fifteen miles that day when finally they 
went into camp; they were almost too tired to 
cook supper. And they knew that that day’s 
work was only a foretaste of what was coming, 
for from now on they would be continually 
“bucking the rapids.” 

The next day they found rapids in plenty, 
indeed. They seemed to come on an average 
of a quarter of a mile apart, and sometimes 
two or three in such close succession that it was 
scarcely worth while to launch the canoe again 
after the first portage. It was slow, toilsome 
work; they grew very tired as the afternoon 
wore on, and shortly before sunset they came 
to one of the worst spots they had yet en- 
countered. 

It was a pair of rapids, less than a hundred 
yards apart. Over the first one the water 
rushed among a medley of irregular boulders, 
and then, after some ten rods of smooth, swift 


154 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


current, poured down a cataract of several 
feet. Huge black rocks, split and tumbled, 
broke up the cataract, and the hoarse roar 
filled the pine woods with sound. 

“I move we camp!” said Fred, eyeing this 
obstacle with disgust. 

“Let’s get over the carry first and camp at 
the top,” Peter urged. “Then we ’ll have a clear 
start for morning.” 

Fred grumbled that they would certainly be 
fresher in the morning than they were then, 
but they unpacked the canoe, and began to 
carry the outfit around the broken water, as 
they had done so many times that day. Once 
at the head of the upper rapid Horace began 
to get out the cooking-utensils. 

“I’ll start supper,” he said. “You fellows 
might see if you can’t land a few trout. There 
ought to be big fellows between these two 
cascades.” 

It did look a good place for trout, and Mac 
had an appetite for fishing that no fatigue could 
stifle. He took the steel fly-rod, and walked 
a little way down the stream past the upper 
rapid. Fred cut a long, slender pole, tied a 
line to it and prepared to fish in a less scien- 
tific fashion. As his rod and line were consider- 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 155 


ably shorter than Mac’s, he got into the canoe, 
put a loop of the tracking-rope around a rock, 
and let himself drift for the length of the rope, 
nearly to the edge of the rough water. Hung in 
this rather precarious position, he was able to 
throw his hook into the foamy water just at the 
foot of the fall, and had a bite almost instantly, 
throwing out a good half-pound fish whose 
orange spots glittered in the sunlight. 

Peter meanwhile was fishing from the shore 
lower down. The thickets were farther back 
from the water than usual, and he had plenty 
of room for the back cast. He was kept busy 
from the first, and when he had time to glance 
up Fred seemed to be having equally good 
luck. 

But at one of these hurried glances his eye 
caught something that appalled him. The 
looped rope that held the straining canoe 
seemed to be in danger of slipping from its hold 
on the rock. 

He shouted, but the roar of the water 
drowned his voice. He started up the bank, 
shouting and gesticulating, but Fred was busy 
with a fish and did not hear or see. Horace 
was cutting wood at a distance. And at that 
moment the rope slipped free. The canoe shot 


156 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


forward, and before Fred could even drop his 
rod he was whirled broadside on into the 
rapid. 

Instantly the canoe capsized. Fred went out 
of sight in the foam and water, and then Mac- 
gregor saw him floating down on the current 
below the rapid. He was on his back, with his 
face just above water, and he did not move a 
limb. 

Mac yelled at him, but got no answer. Fred 
had not been under long enough to be drowned. 
He had evidently been stunned by striking his 
head against a rock. 

Then Mac realized the boy’s new and greater 
danger. Fred was drifting rapidly head first 
toward the second cataract, and no one could 
dive over that fall and live. The rocks at the 
bottom would brain the strongest swimmer. 

Mac instinctively dropped his rod and 
rushed into the water. The strength of the 
swirling current almost swept him off his feet. 
It was too deep to wade, and he was not a good 
swimmer. He could never reach Fred in time. 
They would go over the fall together. 

Fred was more than thirty feet from shore. 
Mac thought of a long pole, and splashed 
madly ashore again. He caught sight of his 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 157 


fishing-rod, with its hundred yards of strong 
silk line on the reel. 

Fred was now about twenty yards above the 
cascade when Mac ran into the river again, 
rod in hand, as far as he dared to wade. He 
measured the distance with his eye, reeled out 
the line, waving the rod in the air, and then, 
with a turn of his wrist, the delicate rod shot 
the pair of flies across the water. 

Mac was an expert fly-caster. The difficulty 
was not in the length of the cast; it was to hook 
the flies in Fred’s clothing. They fell a yard 
beyond the boy’s body. Mac drew them in. 
The hooks seemed to catch for an instant on 
his chest, but came free at the first tug. 

Desperately Mac swished the flies out of the 
water for another cast. He saw that he would 
have time to throw but this once more, for 
Fred was terribly near the cataract, and mov- 
ing faster as the pull of the current quickened. 
Mac waded a little farther into the stream, lean- 
ing against the current to keep his balance. 

The line whirled again, and shot out, and 
again the gut fell across Fred’s shoulders with 
the flies on the other side. With the greatest 
care Mac drew in the line. The first fly dragged 
over the body as before. The other caught, 


158 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


broke loose, and caught again in Fred’s coat 
near the collar, and then the steel rod bent 
with the sudden strain of a hundred and fifty 
pounds drawn down by the strong current. 

Mac knew that the rod was almost unbreak- 
able, but he feared for his line. The current 
pulled so hard that he dared not exert much 
force. Fred’s body swung round with his head 
upstream, his feet toward the cataract, and the 
current split and ripped in spray over his head. 

The lithe steel rod bent hoop-like. There 
was a struggle for a moment, a deadlock be- 
tween the stream and the line, and Mac feared 
that he could not hold it. The light tackle 
would never stand the strain. 

Mac had fought big fishes before, however, 
and he knew how to get the most out of his 
tackle. With the check on the reel he let out 
line inch by inch to ease the resistance; and 
meanwhile he endeavored to swing Fred across 
the current and nearer the shore. 

As he stood with every nerve and muscle 
strained on the fight he suddenly saw Horace 
out of the corner of his eye. Horace was beside 
him, coat and shoes off, with a long hooked 
pole in his hands, gazing with compressed lips 
at his brother’s floating body. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 159 


There was not a word exchanged. Under the 
steady pull Fred came over in an arc of a circle, 
but for every foot that was gained Mac had to 
let out more line. His legs were swinging al- 
ready within a few yards of the dangerous 
verge, but he was getting out of the center of 
the stream, and the current was already less 
violent. 

Inch by inch and foot by foot he came nearer, 
and all at once Horace rushed forward, nearly 
shoulder-deep, and hooked the pole over his 
brother’s arm. At the jerk the gut casting- 
line snapped with a crack, and the end flew 
back like a whip into Peter’s face. But Horace 
had drawn Fred within reach, had gripped 
him, and waded ashore carrying him in his 
arms. 

“I’ll never forget this of you, Mac!” he 
ejaculated as he passed the medical student. 

Fred had already come half to himself when 
they laid him on the bank. He had not swal- 
lowed much water, but had been merely 
knocked senseless by concussion with a boulder. 

“What’s — matter?” he muttered faintly, 
opening his eyes. 

“Keep quiet. You fell in the river. Mac 
fished you out,” said Horace. 


160 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


Fred blinked about vaguely, half-attempted 
to rise and fell back. 

“ Gracious ! What a head I ’ve got ! ” he mut- 
tered dizzily. 

They carried him up to the camp, put him on 
the blankets and examined his cranium. The 
back of his neck was skinned, there was a bleed- 
ing cut on the top of his head and a big bruise 
on the back, but Mac pronounced none of these 
injuries at all serious. While they were exam- 
ining him Fred opened his eyes again. 

“Fished me out, Mac? Guess you saved my 
life,” he murmured. 

“That’s all right, old fellow,” replied Peter; 
and then he gave a sudden start. 

“The canoe!” 

In the excitement over Fred’s rescue they 
had entirely forgotten it. It had drifted down- 
stream. If lost or destroyed they would be left 
stranded in the wilderness — almost as hope- 
lessly as castaways at sea. 

Without another word Mac began to run at 
full speed down the bank in the deepening 
twilight. If the canoe had drifted right down 
the stream, he might never have overtaken it, 
but luckily he came upon it within a mile, 
lying stranded and capsized. By the greatest 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 161 


good luck, too, it was not ruined. It had sev- 
eral bruises and a strip of the rail was split off, 
but it was still water-tight. 

The next morning Fred was fairly recovered 
of his hurts, but felt weak and dizzy, so that 
not much progress was made. During the 
whole forenoon they remained in camp. Horace 
went hunting with the shotgun and got a couple 
of ducks. None of them felt much inclined for 
any more fishing in that almost fatal spot. 

On the following day, however, Fred was 
able to take his share of the work again, and 
the party proceeded. That day and many days 
after were much alike. They tracked the canoe 
up long stretches of rough water, where two 
of them had to wade alongside in order to keep 
it from going over. They made back-breaking 
portages over places where they had to hew 
out a trail for a quarter of a mile. At night 
when they rolled themselves into their blan- 
kets they were too tired to talk. But the 
hard training they had undergone before they 
started showed its results now. Although they 
were dead tired at night, they were always 
ready for the day’s work in the morning. They 
suffered no ill effects from their wettings in 
the river, and their appetites were enormous. 


162 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


The supplies, especially of bacon and flour, 
decreased alarmingly. Although signs of game 
were abundant, they did not like to lose time 
in hunting until they reached the prospecting 
grounds; but a couple of days later meat came 
to them. They had reached the foot of the 
worst rapid they had yet encountered. It was 
a veritable cascade, for the river, narrowing 
between walls of rock, leaped and roared over 
fifty yards of boulders. The portage led up 
a rather steep slope. The three boys, each 
heavily burdened, were struggling along in 
single file, when Horace, who was in front, sud- 
denly sank flat, and with his hand cautioned 
the others to be silent. 

“S-s-h! Lie low!” he whispered. “Give 
me the rifle!” 

Macgregor passed the weapon to him, and 
then he and Fred wriggled forward to look. 

Eighty yards away Fred saw the light-brown 
flank of a doe, and beside her, partly concealed 
by the underbrush, the head and large, ques- 
tioning ears of a fawn. The animals were 
evidently excited, for as Horace lowered his 
rifle, not wishing to kill a mother with young, 
they bounded a few steps nearer, and stood 
gazing back at the thicket from which they 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 163 


had come. The wind blew toward the boys, 
and the roar of the cataract had drowned the 
noise of their approach. 

Suddenly there was a commotion in the 
thicket, and two young bucks burst from the 
spruces and dashed past the doe and fawn 
toward the boys. At the same instant the 
lithe, tawny form of a lynx leaped out. It 
struck like lightning at the fawn, but the little 
fellow sprang aside and bounded after its 
mother. The lynx gave a few prodigious leaps 
and then stood, with tufted ears erect, glaring 
in disappointment. It had all happened with- 
in a few seconds, and the deer were disap- 
pearing behind some rocks and stunted spruces 
fifty yards to the right before the boys thought 
again of their need of meat. 

At that moment, one of the bucks wheeled 
at the edge of the tangle behind which the 
other deer had passed. For an instant he pre- 
sented a fair quartering shot. 

“Shoot quick!” whispered Macgregor, ex- 
citedly. 

As the repeater in Horace’s hands cracked, 
the buck whirled round in a half -circle, leaped 
once, and fell. 

Fred uttered a wild shout, slipped the 


164 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


tumpline from his head, and ran forward. He 
was carrying the shotgun and held it ready; 
but the buck, shot behind the shoulder, was 
virtually dead, although he was kicking feebly. 

The lynx had vanished; there was no sign 
of the other deer. Only the rush of the water 
in the river-bed now disturbed the forest 
stillness. 

The dressing of the game was no small task. 
It was late in the afternoon when the boys had 
finished it and had brought up the rest of their 
outfit to the head of the cataract. “Buck 
Rapids” they named the place. There was 
enough meat on the deer to last them for the 
next week at least. The slices they cut and 
fried that night, although not tender, were 
palatable and nourishing. 

The weather had been warmer that day, and 
for the first time mosquitoes troubled them. 
The boys slept badly, and got up the next 
morning unrefreshed and in no mood to “buck 
the river” again. 

“Why not stop here a couple of days and 
prospect?” Mac suggested at breakfast. 

The proposal struck them all favorably. It 
was the real beginning of the search for for- 
tune. Fred in particular was fired with instant 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 165 

hope, and immediately after breakfast he set 
out to explore the country north of the river; 
he intended to make a wide circle back to the 
Smoke River and to come homeward down its 
bank. He carried a compass, the shotgun, 
and a luncheon of cold flapjacks and fried deer 
meat. Horace went off to the south; Mac- 
gregor remained in camp, to jerk the venison 
by smoking it over a slow fire. 

It was a sunny, warm day. Spring seemed 
to have come with a bound, and the warmth 
had brought out the black flies in swarms. 
All the boys had smeared themselves that 
morning with “fly dope” that they had bought 
at the railway station, but even that black, ill- 
smelling varnish on their hands and faces was 
only partly effectual. Great clouds of the lit- 
tle pests hovered round them. 

Fred struck straight north from the river, 
and then turned a little to the west. He ex- 
amined the ground with the utmost care. The 
land lay in great ridges and valleys, and he 
soon found that prospecting was almost as 
rough work as fighting the river. In the valleys 
the earth was mucky with melting snow water; 
on the hills it was rocky, with huge boulders, 
tumbled heaps of shattered stone, slopes of 


166 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


loose gravel; everywhere was a tangle of 
stunted, scrubby birch and poplar, spruce and 
jack-pine. 

After half an hour he came upon a small 
creek that flowed from the northwest. With a 
glance at his compass, he started to follow it. 
For nearly three hours he plodded along the 
creek, digging into the banks with a stick and 
examining every spot where there seemed a 
chance of finding blue clay; but he found 
nothing except ordinary sand and gravel. At 
last, disappointed and disheartened, he turned 
back toward the Smoke River. After a mile 
or so he stopped to eat his luncheon, and built 
a smudge to keep the flies away; then he pro- 
ceeded onward through the rough, unprofitable 
country. 

But if he did not find diamonds, he came 
on plenty of game. Ruffed grouse and spruce 
partridges rose here and there and perched in 
the trees. He saw many rabbits, and there 
were signs where deer or moose had browsed 
on the birch twigs. Once, as he came over a 
ridge, he caught a glimpse of a black bear 
digging at a pile of rotten logs in the valley. 
The animal evidently had not been long out 
of winter quarters, for it looked starved, and 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 167 


its fur was tattered and rusty. The moment 
the bear caught sight of him, it vanished like 
a dark streak. 

Fred found no trace that afternoon of blue 
clay, or, indeed, of any clay, but he happened 
upon something that caused him some appre- 
hension. It was a steel trap, lying on the 
open ground, battered and rusted as if it had 
been there for some time. Scattered round it 
were some bones that he guessed had belonged 
to a lynx. Apparently the animal had been 
caught in the trap, which was of the size gen- 
erally used for martens, had broken the chain 
from its fastening, and had traveled until it 
had either perished from starvation or had 
been killed by wolves. 

Although rusty, the trap was still in working 
condition, and Fred, somewhat uneasy, took 
it along with him. Some one had been trap- 
ping in that district recently, perhaps during 
the last winter; was the stranger also looking 
for diamonds? 

With frequent glances at his compass Fred 
kept zigzagging to and fro, and finally came 
out on the river again; but he was still a long 
way from camp, and he did not reach the head 
of the cataract until nearly sunset. 


168 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


Horace had already come in, covered with 
mud and swollen with fly bites. 

“What luck?” cried Fred, eagerly. 

His brother shook his head. He had en- 
countered the same sort of rough country as 
Fred; and to add to his troubles, he had got 
into a morass, from which he had escaped in 
a very muddy condition. 

Then Fred produced the trap and told of his 
finding it and of his fears. The boys examined 
it and tested its springs. Horace took a more 
cheerful view of the matter. 

“The O jib was always trap through here 
in the winter,” he said. “The owner of that 
trap is probably down at Moose Factory now. 
Besides, the lynx might have traveled twenty 
or thirty miles from the place where it was 
caught.” 

In spite of the failure of the day’s work 
they all felt hopeful; but they resolved to push 
on farther before doing any more prospecting. 

The next morning they launched the canoe, 
and for four days more faced the river. Each 
day the work was harder. Each day they 
had a succession of back-breaking portages; 
sometimes they were able to pole a little; they 
hauled the canoe for hours by the tracking- 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 169 


line, and in those four days they traveled 
scarcely thirty miles. 

On the last day they met with a serious mis- 
fortune. While they were hauling the canoe 
up a rapid the craft narrowly escaped capsiz- 
ing, and spilled out a large tin that contained 
twenty-five pounds of corn meal and ten pounds 
of rice — their entire stock. What was worse, 
the cover came off, and the precious contents 
disappeared in the water. 

About fifteen pounds of Graham flour and 
five pounds of oatmeal were all the breadstuffs 
they had left now, and they had to use it most 
sparingly. 

But they were well within the region where 
Horace thought that the diamond-beds must 
lie. On the map it had seemed a small area; 
but now they realized that it was a huge stretch 
of tangled wilderness, where a dozen diamond- 
beds might defy discovery. Even Horace, the 
veteran prospector, admitted that they had a 
big job before them. 

“However, we’ll find the blue clay if it’s on 
the surface — and the supplies hold out,” he 
said, with determination. 

The next morning each of the boys went out 
in a different direction. Late in the afternoon 


170 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


they came back, one by one, tried and fly- 
bitten, and each with the same failure to re- 
port. The ground was much as they had found 
it before, covered with rock and gravel in rolling 
ridges. Nowhere had they found the blue clay. 

They spent two more days here, working 
hard from morning to night, with no success. 
The next day they again moved camp a day’s 
journey upstream; that brought them into the 
heart of the district from which they had ex- 
pected so much. The river was growing so 
narrow and so broken that it would be almost 
impossible for them to follow it farther by 
canoe. If they pushed on they would have to 
abandon their craft, and carry what supplies 
they could on their backs. 

But they intended to spend a week here. 
They set out on the diamond hunt again with 
fresh energy. A warm, soft drizzle was falling, 
which to some extent kept down the flies. 

Horace came back to camp first; he had had 
no success. He was trying to find dry wood to 
rekindle the fire when he saw Fred coming down 
the bank at a run. The boy’s face was aglow. 

“Look here, Horace! What’s this?” he 
asked, as he came up panting. In his hand he 
held a large, wet lump of greenish-blue, clayey 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 171 


mud. Horace took it, poked into it, and turned 
it over. Then he glanced sympathetically at 
his brother’s face. 

“I’m afraid it is n’t anything, old boy,” he 
said. “Only ordinary mud. The real blue 
clay is more of a gray blue, you know, and 
generally as hard as bricks.” 

Fred pitched the stuff into the river and said 
nothing, but his face showed his disappoint- 
ment. He had carried that lump of clay for 
over four miles, in the conviction that he had 
discovered the diamond-bearing soil. 

Macgregor came in shortly afterward with 
nothing more valuable than two ducks that he 
had shot. 

The boys were discouraged that evening. 
After the rain they could find little dry wood. 
It was nearly dark before Fred began to stir 
up the usual pan of flapjacks, and “Mac” set 
himself to the task of cutting up one of the 
ducks to fry. They were too much depressed 
to talk, and the camp was quiet, when sud- 
denly a crackling tread sounded in the under- 
brush. 

“What’s that?” cried Horace sharply. And 
as he spoke, a man stepped out of the shadow, 
and advanced into the firelight. 


172 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“Bo’ soir! Hello!” he said, curtly. 

“Hello! Good evening!” cried Fred and 
Mac, much startled. 

“Sit down. Grub’ll be ready in a minute,” 
Horace added. Hospitality comes before every- 
thing else in the North. 

“Had grub,” answered the man; but he sat 
down on a log beside the fire, and surveyed 
the whole camp with keen, quick eyes. 

All the boys looked at him with much curi- 
osity. He was apparently of middle age, with 
a tangled beard and black hair that straggled 
down almost to his shoulders. He wore moc- 
casins, Mackinaw trousers shiny with blood 
and grease, a buckskin jacket, and a flannel 
shirt. He was brown as any Ojibwa, and he 
carried a repeating rifle and had a belt of 
cartridges at his waist. 

“Hunting?” he asked presently, with a nod 
at the deerskin that was hanging to dry. 

“Now and again,” said Horace. 

“Well, ye can’t hunt here,” said the 
man deliberately, after a pause. “Don’t ye 
know that this is a Government forest reserve? 
No hunters allowed. Ye’ll have to be out of 
here by to-morrow.” 


CHAPTER XI 


The boys were thunderstruck at the stran- 
ger’s assertion. They knew of several forest 
reserves in northern Ontario where timber and 
game are closely protected, but they had never 
heard of one in this district. 

“I guess you’re wrong,” said Horace. 
There is n’t any Government reserve north of 
Timagami.” 

“Made last fall,” the stranger retorted. “I 
ought to know. I ’m one of the rangers. We ’ve 
got a camp up the river, and we’ve been here 
all winter to keep out hunters and lumber- 
men.” 

Horace looked at him closely, but said 
nothing. 

“Prospecting’s allowed, isn’t it?” Fred 
blurted out. 

“Prospect all ye want to, but ye can’t stake 
no claims.” 

“Where’s the limit of this reserve?” asked 
Mac. 

“Ten miles down the river from here. Ye’ll 
have to be down below there by to-morrow 


174 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


night. Or, if ye want to stay, ye ’ll have to give 
up your guns. No guns allowed here.” 

“I suppose you’ve got papers to show your 
authority?” Mac inquired. 

“ ’Course I have. They’re back at camp. Oh, 
ye’ll get all ye want. Why,” pointing to the 
fresh hide, “ye killed that there deer out of 
season. Ye’ve got the law agin ye for that.” 

“It was for our own food. You can kill deer 
for necessary supplies.” 

“Not on this ground. Now ye can do as ye 
like — give up your guns till ye ’re ready to 
leave, or get out right away. I’ve warned ye.” 

The “ranger” got up and glanced round 
threateningly. 

“If you can show us that you’re really a 
Government ranger, we’ll go,” Horace said. 
“But I know the Commissioner of Crown 
Lands; I saw him before we started, and I did 
n’t hear of any new reserve being made. I don’t 
believe in you or your reserve, and we’ll stay 
where we are till you show us the proof of 
your authority.” 

“I’ll show you this!” exclaimed the man 
fiercely, slapping the barrel of his rifle. 

“You can’t bluff us. We’ve got guns, too, 
if it comes to that!” cried Fred. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 175 


“I’ve give ye fair warning,” repeated the 
man. “Ye’ll find it mighty hard to buck agin 
the Gover ’ment, and ye ’ll be sorry if ye try it. 
Ye’ll see me again.” 

Turning, he stepped into the shadows and 
was gone. The boys looked at one another. 

“What do you make of it?” Peter asked. 
“Is he a ranger — or a prospector? ” 

“They don’t hire that kind of man for Gov- 
ernment rangers,” replied Horace. “And I’m 
certain there’s no forest reserve here. Why, 
there’s no timber worth preserving. He’s a 
hunter or a prospector, and from his looks 
he ’s evidently been in the woods all winter, as 
he said. Perhaps he belongs to a party of 
prospectors who found a good thing last fall, 
and got snowed in before they could get out.” 

“Hunters wouldn’t be so anxious to drive 
us away,” said Fred. “They must be pros- 
pectors. Suppose they’ve found the diamond 
fields!” 

They had all thought of that. There was a 
gloomy silence. 

“One thing’s certain,” said Horace, “we 
must trail those fellows down, and see what 
sort of men they are and where they ’re camped. 
We’ll scout up the river to-morrow.” 


176 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


They all felt nervous and uneasy that eve- 
ning. They stayed up late, and when they 
went to bed they loaded their guns and laid 
them close at hand. 

But the night passed without any disturb- 
ance, and after breakfast they set out at once 
to trail the ranger. They followed the river 
for about four miles, to a point where the 
stream broke through the hills in a succession 
of cascades and rapids; but although they 
searched all the landscape with the field-glass 
from the top of the hills, they saw no sign of 
man. Beyond the ridges, however, the river 
turned sharply into a wooded valley. They 
struggled through the undergrowth, found 
another curve in the river, rounded it — and 
then stepped hastily back into cover. 

About two hundred yards upstream stood a 
log hut on the shore, at the foot of a steep 
bluff. A wreath of smoke rose from its chim- 
ney, but no one was in sight. Talking in 
low tones, the boys watched it for some time. 
Then they made a detour through the woods, 
and crept round to the top of the bluff. Peer- 
ing cautiously over the edge, they saw the 
cabin below them, not fifty yards away. 

It looked like a trappers’ winter camp. It 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 177 


was built of spruce logs, chinked with mud 
and moss. A deep layer of scattered chips 
beside the remains of a log pile showed that 
the place had been used all winter. 

Presently a man came out of the door, 
stretched himself lazily, and carried a block of 
wood into the cabin. It was not the man they 
had seen, but a slender, dark fellow, dressed 
in buckskin, who looked like a half-breed. 
In a moment he came out again, and this time 
the ranger came with him. There was a third 
man in the cabin, for they could hear some 
one speaking from inside the shack. 

For some moments the men stood talking; 
their voices were quite audible, but the boys 
could not make out what they were saying. 
The two men examined a pile of steel traps 
beside the door and a number of pelts that 
were drying on frames in the open air. 

“These aren’t rangers. They’re just ordi- 
nary trappers,” Mac whispered to Horace. 

“They’ve certainly been trapping. But why 
do they want to run us out of the country?” 

In a few minutes both men went into the 
cabin, came out with rifles, and started down 
the river-bank. 

“They may be going down to our camp,” 


178 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


Horace said, “and we must be there to meet 
them. We’d better hurry back.” 

The boys started at as fast a pace as the 
rough ground would allow. Owing to dense 
thickets, swamps, and piled boulders, they 
could not make much speed. In about twenty 
minutes Fred heard a sound of falling water 
in front, and supposed that they were ap- 
proaching the river. He was mistaken. Within 
a few yards they came upon a tiny lake fed 
by a creek at one end and closed at the other 
by a pile of logs and brush. Curious heaps of 
mud and sticks showed here and there above 
the water. Horace uttered an exclamation. 

“A beaver pond!” he cried. “That explains 
it all.” 

In a moment the same thought flashed over 
Fred and Macgregor. The killing of beaver is 
entirely prohibited in Ontario; but in spite of 
that, a good deal of illicit trapping goes on in 
the remote districts, and the poachers usually 
carry their pelts across the line into the Prov- 
ince of Quebec, where they can sell the fur. 
Naturally, the trappers had resented the 
appearance of the three boys in the vicinity of 
the beaver pond ; the men had no wish to have 
their illegal trapping discovered. It was the 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 179 


first beaver pond the boys had ever met with, 
and in spite of their hurry they stopped to look 
at it. They came upon two or three traps skill- 
fully set under water, and one of them con- 
tained a beaver, sleek and drowned, held under 
the surface. Apparently the men intended to 
clean out the pond, for the season was already 
late for fur. 

After a few minutes the boys hurried on. 
They met no one on the way, and they found 
everything undisturbed in camp; they kept a 
sharp lookout all day, but no one came near 
them. 

On the whole, they felt considerably relieved 
by the result of their scouting. The lawbreak- 
ers had no right to order them off the ground. 
For their own part, the boys felt under no ob- 
ligation to interfere with the beaver trappers. 

“If we meet any of them again, we’ll let 
them know plainly that we know how things 
stand,” said Mac. “We’ll let them alone if 
they let us alone, and I don’t think there ’ll be 
any more trouble.” 

It rained hard that evening — a warm, steady 
downpour that lasted almost until morning. 
The tent leaked, and the boys passed a 
wretched night. But day came pleasant and 


180 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


warm, with a moist, springlike air; the leaves 
had unfolded in the night. The warmth 
brought out the flies in increased numbers. 
They smeared their skins with a fresh applica- 
tion of “fly dope,” and with little thought for 
the fur poachers, started out again to prospect. 
All that day and the next they worked hard; 
they saw nothing of the trappers, and found 
nothing even remotely resembling blue clay. 

The condition of their footwear had begun 
to worry them. The rough usage was begin- 
ning to tell heavily on their boots, which were 
already ripping, and which had begun to wear 
through the soles; they would hardly hold 
together for another fortnight. But the boys 
bound them up and patched them with strips 
of the deerskin, and kept hard at work. 

In the course of the next two days they 
thoroughly examined all the country within 
five miles of their present camp. On the eve- 
ning of the second day they finished the last of 
the oatmeal, and Horace examined the remain- 
ing supply of Graham flour with anxiety. 

“Just about enough to get home on, boys,” 
he said, looking dubiously at his companions. 

“But we’re not going home!” cried Mac. 

“The flour and beans ’ll be gone in another 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 181 


week, and we ’re a long way from civilization. 
Can we live on meat alone, Mac?” 

“Pretty sure to come down with dysentery 
if we do — for any length of time,” admitted 
the medical student reluctantly. 

There was silence round the fire. 

“We didn’t start this expedition right,” 
said Horace, at last. “I should have planned 
it better. We ought to have come with two or 
three canoes and with twice as much grub, 
and we should have brought several pairs of 
boots apiece.” 

He thrust out his foot; his bare skin showed 
through the ripped leather. 

“Make moccasins,” Mac suggested. 

“They would n’t stand the rough traveling 
for any time.” 

“What do you think we ought to do, 
Horace?” asked Fred. 

“Well, I hate to retreat as much as any 
one,” said Horace, after a pause. “But I 
know — better than either of you — the risk of 
losing our lives if we try to run it too fine on 
provisions. At the same time I do think that 
we ought n’t to give up till we ’ve reached the 
head of this river. It’s probably not more 
than ten or fifteen miles up.” 


182 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


After some discussion they decided that 
Macgregor and Fred should make the journey 
to the head of the river, carrying provisions 
for three days; that would give them one day 
in which to prospect at the source. Mean- 
while, Horace was to strike across country to 
the northwest, to the headwaters of the White- 
fish River, about fifteen miles away. 

The next morning, therefore, they carefully 
cached the canoe, the tent, and the heavy part 
of the outfit, and started. They were all to be 
back on the third evening at the latest, whether 
they found anything or not. 

Fred and Mac made a wide detour to 
avoid the hut of the trappers. They had a 
hard day’s tramp over the rough country, 
but reached their destination rather sooner 
than they expected. The river, shrunk to a 
rapid creek, ended in a tiny lake between two 
hills. 

The general surface of the country was 
the same as that which had already grown so 
monotonously familiar, except that there was 
rather more outcrop of bedrock. Nowhere 
could they see anything that seemed to suggest 
the presence of blue clay, and although they 
spent the whole of the next twenty-four hours 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 183 


in making wide circles round the lake, they 
found nothing. 

The following morning they started back, 
depressed and miserable. If Horace’s trip 
should also prove fruitless, the chances of 
their finding the diamonds would be slim 
indeed. The Smoke River made a wide turn 
to the west and north, and they concluded that 
a straight line by compass across the wilder- 
ness would save them several miles of travel, 
and would also give them a chance to see some 
fresh ground. They left the river, therefore, 
and struck a bee-line to the southeast. The 
new ground proved as unprofitable as the old, 
and somewhat rougher. The journey had been 
hard on shoe leather; Fred was limping badly. 

Late in the afternoon the boys stopped to 
rest on the top of a bare, rocky ridge, where 
the black flies were not so bad as in the valleys. 
They guessed that they were about four or 
five miles from camp. The sun shone level 
and warm from the west, and the boys sat in 
silence, tired and discouraged. 

“I’m afraid we’re not going to make a mil- 
lion this trip, Mac,” said Fred, at last. 

“No,” Peter replied soberly. “Unless Hor- 
ace has struck something.” 


184 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“It’s too big a country to look over inch by 
inch. If there really are any diamond-beds — ” 
“Oh, there must be some. Horace found 
scattered stones last summer, you know. But 
of course the beds may be far underground. 
In South Africa they often have to sink deep 
shafts to strike them.” 

Fred did not answer at once. He had taken 
out the field-glass that he carried, and was 
turning it aimlessly this way and that, when 
Mac spoke suddenly: — 

“What’s that moving in the ravine — see! 
About a hundred yards up, below the big cedar 
on the rock.” 

“Ground hog, likely,” said Fred, turning 
the glass toward the rocky gorge, through 
which ran a little stream that lay at the base 
of the ridge. “I don’t see anything. Oh — 
yes, now I’ve got ’em. One — two — three — 
four little animals. Why, they’re playing 
together like kittens! They look like young 
foxes, only they’re far too dark-colored.” 

Mac suddenly snatched the glass. But Fred, 
now that he knew where to look, could see 
the moving black specks with his unaided eye. 
Just behind them was a dark opening that 
might be the mouth of a den. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 185 


‘ ‘ They are foxes ! 99 said Mac. “ It ’s a family 
of fox cubs. You’re right. And — and — why, 
man, they’re black — every one of them!” 

He lowered the glass, almost dropping it in 
his excitement, and stared at his companion. 

“Fred, it’s a den of black foxes!” 


CHAPTER XII 


“Black foxes!” cried Fred. “Mac, give me 
the glass!” 

“Black, all right,” Macgregor said. “Four 
of them, black as jet. See the fur shine ! I can’t 
see the old ones. There, I believe I saw some- 
thing move just inside the burrow! Anyhow, 
all the cubs are going in.” 

He handed the glass to Fred, who raised it 
to his eyes just in time to see the black, bushy 
tail of the last cub disappear into the hole. 

“Black foxes!” he said, in an awed whisper. 
“Four of them! Why, Mac, they’re worth a 
fortune, are n’t they?” 

“And probably two old ones,” said the 
medical student. “A fortune? Rather! Why, 
in London a good black fox pelt sometimes 
brings two or three thousand dollars. The 
traders here pay only a few hundreds, but if 
I had a couple of good skins I’d take them 
over to London myself.” 

“But we have n’t got them. And we’ve no 
traps.” 

“One of us might watch here with the rifle 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 187 

for the old ones. I could hit a fox from 
here, but the bullet would tear the skin 
awfully” 

“Yes, and it’s too late in the spring now 
for the fur to be any good, I’m afraid,” said 
Fred. 

“Not first-class, that’s a fact,” Mac admit- 
ted sadly. “But what can we do? We can’t 
wait here all summer for the cubs to grow 
up.” 

“Let’s go down and take a look at the den,” 
Fred proposed. 

“Better not. If the old foxes get suspicious 
they’ll move the den and we’ll never find it 
again. I think we’d best go quietly away. 
This is too big a thing for us to take chances 
on. 

They took careful note of the spot before 
they left, and in order to make assurance 
doubly sure, Mac blazed a tree every ten paces 
or so until they struck the river again. 

They had followed the river downward for 
about two miles when they saw the smoke 
rising from their camping-ground. Hurrying 
up, they found that Horace had come in 
already. He had brought out the supplies 
and was frying bacon. 


188 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“What luck?” cried Fred, forgetting the 
foxes for a moment in his anxiety to hear 
the result of Horace’s trip. 

“None,” said Horace curtly. He looked 
tired, dirty, and discouraged. “I went clear 
to the Whitefish — nothing doing. But what 
are you fellows grinning about? What did 
you find at the head of the river? You have 
n’t — it is n’t possible that you’ve hit it!” 

“No, not diamonds,” said Mac. “But we 
’ve found something valuable.” And he told 
of their discovery of the black foxes. “But 
the problem is how to get them,” he finished. 
“The only way I can see is to shoot them at 
long range.” 

“Shoot them! Are you crazy?” exclaimed 
Horace, who was even more stirred by the 
news than they had expected. “Never! Catch 
’em alive! They’re worth their weight in 
gold.” 

“ Alive ! I never thought of that ! ” exclaimed 
Fred. 

“Why, their fur is no good now. Besides, 
suppose you did get a wretched thousand 
dollars or so for the pelts — what ’s that? Why, 
down in Prince Edward Island a pair of live 
black foxes for breeding was sold for $45,000.” 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 189 


“Gracious!” gasped Fred. 

“Down there every one is wild about breed- 
ing fur. A big syndicate has a ranch that’s 
guarded with watchmen and burglar alarms 
like a bank. Their great trouble is to get the 
breeding stock, and they’ll pay almost any 
price for live, uninjured black foxes. If we 
could manage to catch this pair of old ones 
and the four cubs without hurting them, they 
ought to bring — I’d be afraid to guess how 
much! Maybe a hundred thousand dollars! 
Kill them? Why, you’d kill a goose that laid 
golden eggs!” 

“That’s right! I’ve heard of those fox 
ranches, of course,” said Mac, “but I didn’t 
think of them at the moment. A hundred 
thousand dollars! But how on earth can we 
catch them? We might dig the cubs out of 
their den, but we could n’t get the old ones 
that way. If we only had a few traps ! ” 

“Why, there’s that trap I found in the 
woods!” exclaimed Fred suddenly. 

They had all forgotten it; they had dropped 
the trap into the dunnage, and had not seen 
or thought of it since. Now, however, they 
eagerly rummaged it out, and examined it 
critically. 


190 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


It was badly rusted, but not broken. Mac 
knocked off the dirt and rust scales, rubbed it 
thoroughly with grease, and set it. When he 
touched the pan with a stick the jaws snapped. 
The springs were a little stiff, but after they 
had been worked several times and well 
greased, the trap seemed to be almost as good 
as new. 

“We should have three or four of them,” 
said Peter. “Having only one trap gives us a 
slim chance. But suppose we do get them, 
what then?” 

“Why, we’ll have to have some sort of cage 
ready in which to carry them; then we’ll make 
all the speed we can back to Toronto,” replied 
Horace. 

“And give up the diamond hunt?” cried 
Mac, in disappointment. 

“What else can we do, anyhow?” replied 
Horace. “The flour is almost gone and we’re 
almost barefoot. And see here, boys,” he went 
on, earnestly, “I hate to admit it, but I’m 
afraid my calculations were wrong on these 
diamond-beds. I thought it all out while I 
was coming home from Whitefish River. Some- 
where up here in the North there must be a 
place where those diamonds came from — but 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 191 


I ’m beginning to believe it is n’t in this part 
of the country. You see, the geological forma- 
tion is all different from the kind where dia- 
mond matrix is ever found. Those stones I 
picked up may have been traveling for a 
thousand years down one creek and another. 
They may have come down in the glacial drift. 
I was altogether too hasty, I see now, in assum- 
ing that they originated in one of the rivers 
where I found them. 

“They may have come from a river a hun- 
dred miles away. Or perhaps from deep under- 
ground. We should have made a study of the 
geological structure of this whole North Coun- 
try, the direction of the glacial drift, and every- 
thing. Then we should have come in here 
prepared to travel a thousand miles and stay 
all summer, or for two summers, if necessary.” 

“Hanged if I’ll give it up,” said Mac stub- 
bornly. “However,” he added, “we must cer- 
tainly try to catch these black diamonds, and 
we can keep on prospecting at the same time.” 

They uncached their outfit, pitched the tent 
again, and prepared supper; meanwhile they 
talked of the foxes until they reached a high 
pitch of enthusiasm. Even Mac admitted that 
the black foxes bade fair to be as profitable as 


192 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


a small diamond-bed would be. As for Fred, 
it was almost with relief that he let the dia- 
mond hunt take second place in his mind. The 
continual strain of labor and failure had robbed 
the search for the blue clay of much of its 
fascination. 

Early the next morning they paddled up the 
river to the point where Mac’s blazed trail 
came down to the shore, and set out to recon- 
noiter the den. After half an hour’s tramp- 
ing across the woods they reached the rocky 
ridge; through the field-glass they scrutinized 
the lair, which was about two hundred yards 
away. 

Not a hair of a fox was in sight, but the 
burrow looked as if it could be opened with 
spade and pick. Horace thought they ought 
to do that first of all; in that way they could 
capture the cubs before there was any possi- 
ble danger of the old foxes’ moving the den. 

On their way back to camp, Mac stopped at 
a marshy pool and cut a great armful of willow 
withes. 

“It’s lucky that I once used to watch an old 
willow worker making baskets and chairs,” 
he said. “I’ll see if I’ve forgotten the trick 
of it. We’ve got to make a cage, for we’ll 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 193 

need one the instant we capture one of those 
cubs.” 

He made a strong framework of birch, with 
bars as thick as his wrist, which he notched 
together, and lashed with deer-hide. Then 
he had the framework of a box about three 
feet long, two feet wide, and two feet deep, 
through which he now began to weave the 
tough, pliable withes. 

He did not altogether remember the trick of 
it, and he had to stop frequently to plan it 
out. He worked all that afternoon, and con- 
tinued his labor by firelight. He did not finish 
the cage until the middle of the next forenoon. 
It was rough-looking, but light, and nearly as 
strong as an iron trunk, and had a door in the 
top. 

All that remained for them to do now was 
to catch the game. They ate a hasty luncheon, 
and carrying the cage, the trap, the axe, the 
spade and pick, two blankets, and the guns, 
started back along Mac’s blazed trail. So 
great was their eager hurry that they stumbled 
over roots and stones. 

Clambering down the ravine, they cautiously 
approached the foxes’ den. The opening to 
the burrow was a triangular hole between two 


194 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


flat rocks. From it came a faint odor of putrid 
flesh. The ground in front was strewn with 
muskrat tails, small bones, and the beaks and 
feet of partridges and ducks. From the rocks 
Fred picked off two or three black hairs. 

The boys looked into the dark hole and lis- 
tened intently. They could not hear a sound, 
but they knew that the cubs, at any rate, 
must be within. Mac cut a sapling, trimmed 
it down and sharpened one end of it; with 
that as a lever the boys loosened the rocks 
at the entrance of the burrow, and rolled 
them aside. The burrow ran backward and 
downward into the ground, but there seemed 
to be nothing in their way now except earth, 
gravel, and roots. Horace picked up the 
spade and began to dig; occasionally he had 
to stop to cut a tree root or pick out a rock. 
Meanwhile, Peter and Fred stood close be- 
hind him, ready to stuff the blankets into 
the hole in case the occupants should try to 
bolt. 

They uncovered the burrow for about four 
feet; then they had to dislodge another rather 
large stone. There seemed to be a large, dark 
cavity down behind it. When they stopped 
to listen, they could hear a slight sound of 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 195 

movement in the darkness, and a faint squeak- 
ing. 

“ They ’re there,” said Horace; “not a yard 
away. Now who’s going to reach in and pull 
’em out?” 

Macgregor volunteered at once; he crept up 
to the hole and cautiously thrust in his arm. 
There was a sound of scrambling inside and a 
sharp squeal. Mac, with a strained expres- 
sion on his face, groped about with his hand 
inside the hole. 

When he withdrew his arm, there was blood 
on his hand, but he held by the neck a little 
jet-black animal with a bushy tail, as large 
as a kitten. 

“Open the cage — quick!” he cried. 

Fred held the door up, and Mac dropped 
the cub in. For a moment the animal rushed 
from side to side, and then crouched trembling 
in a corner. 

“Nipped me on the thumb,” said Mac, 
examining his hand. “They’ve got teeth like 
needles. But the old one does n’t seem to be 
there now, and I can easily get the rest.” 

He fished the second out without being 
bitten, and caged it safely. But his hold on 
the third cub could not have been very secure. 


196 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


for the little creature managed by struggling 
frantically to squirm out of his hand. It turned 
over in the air, landed on its four feet, and 
darted swiftly away. 

The boys shouted in dismay. Fred flung 
himself sprawling upon the cub; but it evaded 
him like lightning, and bolted into the under- 
growth. It would have been useless to pur- 
sue it. 

The boys were greatly chagrined. 

“It was my fault,” said Peter, in disgust. 
“But it can’t be helped now, and there’s 
another to come out.” 

He had trouble in getting hold of the last 
of the cubs. Twice he winced with pain as 
the animal bit him, but at last he hauled it 
into view. It was a little larger than the 
others; it scratched and bit like a fury, and 
nearly broke away before they got it into the 
cage. 

The boys gathered round and gloated over 
their prizes. With their glossy jet coats, bushy 
tails, prick-eared faces, and comical air of 
intense intelligence, the cubs were beautiful 
little creatures; but they were all in a desperate 
panic, and huddled together in the farthest 
corner of the cage. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 197 


“ If we can only get them home in good con- 
dition they should be worth fifteen thousand/’ 
said Horace. “But I’m much afraid they 
won’t live unless we can get the mother to 
travel with them. But now that we have the 
cubs it should be rather easy to catch her, and 
maybe the father, too.” 

They set the cage back into the hollow made 
by the ruined burrow, and laid spruce branches 
over it so that it was well hidden. Then they 
wrapped the jaws of the trap with strips of 
cloth so that they would not cut the fox’s skin, 
and set it directly in front of the cage. Finally 
they scattered dead leaves over the trap. The 
cubs themselves would act as bait. 

“A fox never deserts her young,” Horace 
said. “She’s sure to come back to-night, prob- 
ably along with her mate, to carry off the cubs, 
and we ’ve a good chance to catch one or both 
of them.” 

It seemed dangerous to go away and leave 
that precious cageful of little foxes at the 
mercy, perhaps, of the beaver trappers; per- 
haps prowling lynxes or wolves. However, the 
boys had to take the risk. As to the trappers, 
they had seen nothing of them for so long that 
they had little fear of them. 


198 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


They went back to camp and tried to pass 
the time; but they could talk of nothing except 
black foxes. Fred conceived the idea of using 
their stock to start a breeding establishment 
of their own, and Macgregor was elaborating 
the plan, when suddenly he stopped with a 
frown. 

“Is it so certain that the parents of those 
cubs are black?” he asked. “I’ve heard that 
black foxes are an accident, a sport, and that 
the mother or father is very often red.” 

“That’s something that naturalists have 
never settled,” replied Horace. “Some think 
that the black fox is a distinct strain, others 
that it’s merely a ‘sport,’ as you say. How- 
ever, when all the cubs in the litter are pure 
black, I think it’s safe to assume that the 
parents are black also.” 

It was scarcely daylight the next morning 
before the boys were hurrying along the blazed 
trail again. Shaking with suppressed excite- 
ment, they approached the ravine of the foxes. 
When they came in sight of the den and the 
cage their anticipation was succeeded by bitter 
disappointment. The trap was undisturbed. 
Nothing had been caught. The cubs were 
still in the cage, as frightened as ever. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 199 


But they found that one at least of the old 
foxes had visited the place, for the dry leaves 
were disturbed; there were marks of sharp 
teeth on the willows of the cage, and inside 
the cage were the tails of a couple of wood 
mice. Unable to get her cubs out of the cage, 
the mother had brought them food. 

It seemed too bad to take advantage of her 
mother love, but as Horace remarked, all they 
desired was to restore her to her family; once 
on the fox ranch, she would be treated like a 
queen. 

They put the cage farther back and piled 
rocks round it, so that it could be approached 
only by one narrow path. In the path they 
placed the trap, and again covered it carefully 
with leaves. 

The cubs had to be left for another night, 
and the boys had another hard day of waiting. 
None of them had the heart to try to pros- 
pect. Macgregor went after ducks with the 
shotgun; the others lounged about, and killed 
time as best they could. They all went to bed 
early, and before sunrise again started for the 
den. 

It was fully light when they came to the 
hill over the ravine, and as they sighted the 


200 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


den, a cry of excitement broke from all three 
of them at once. 

From where they stood they could see the 
cage, and the crouching form of a black animal 
beside it, evidently in the trap. And over the 
beast with the dark fur stood a man in a 
buckskin jacket, with a club raised to strike. 


CHAPTER XIII 


Fred and Mac, who were carrying the 
guns, fired wildly at the man at the trap; they 
took no aim, for their only purpose was to 
startle him and to keep him from killing the 
fox. When the shots rang out, the man 
straightened up, saw the boys rushing down the 
hill toward him, and dropped his club. Step- 
ping back, he picked up his rifle, and as they 
dashed up, held it ready to shoot. 

Fred gave a whoop when he saw that the 
animal in the trap was really a black fox; 
moreover, it was the mother fox. Her black 
coat was glossy and spotless. 

Horace turned to the man. “Let that fox 
alone!” he cried. “That’s our fox!” 

“Yours? It’s my fox!” retorted the man 
angrily. “Why, that’s my trap!” 

“I don’t believe it; we found it in the 
woods. Anyway, you can have the trap if 
you like, but the fox is certainly ours. We’ve 
been after her for some time.” 

“Me and my pardners have been after this 
fox all winter,” declared the trapper. “Now 


202 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


that we’ve got her we’re going to keep her — 
you can bet on that.” 

He made a movement toward the fox. 

“None of that!” cried Mac, sharply, and 
snapped a fresh cartridge into the rifle cham- 
ber. 

“You would, would you?” cried the trap- 
per, and instantly covered Peter with his gun. 
Fred had reloaded the shotgun, and he covered 
the man in his turn. 

So for a moment they all stood at a dead- 
lock. 

“Put down your guns!” said Horace. “A 
fox pelt is n’t worth killing a man for, and this 
pelt’s no good, anyway. It’s too late in the 
season. We’re going to take this fox away 
with us alive. Stick to your beavers, for you 
can’t steal this animal from us — and you can 
bet on that!” he added, with great emphasis. 

“You might shoot one of us, but you’d have 
a hole in you the next minute,” said Mac. 
“You’d better drop it, now, and get out!” 

The trapper glared at them with a face as 
savage as a wildcat’s. For a second Fred 
really expected him to shoot. Then, with a 
muttered curse, the man lowered his gun. 

“You pups won’t bark so loud when I come 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 203 

back!” he snarled. Then he turned, and 
started away at a rapid pace. 

“Bluffed!” Fred exclaimed, trembling now 
that the strain was over. 

“He’s gone for the rest of his gang!” Mac 
cried. “Quick, we’ve got to get out of here!” 

“Yes, and far away, too,” said Horace, 
“ now that we ’ve caught the mother fox. We 
should never have got the male, anyway. 
Let’s get this beauty into her box.” 

The black fox was indeed a beauty, but there 
was no time to admire her. Snarling viciously, 
she laid back her ears and showed her white 
teeth. Her hind leg was in the trap, but did not 
appear to have been injured by the padded jaws. 

Horace cut two strong forked sticks, with 
which the boys pinned her down by the neck 
and hips. Fred opened the jaws of the trap; 
Mac picked the fox up firmly by the back of 
her neck, and in spite of her frantic struggles, 
thrust her into the cage. 

Horace and Mac then seized the box, one at 
either end, and started toward the river; Fred 
carried the guns and kept a sharp lookout in 
front. The cage of foxes was not heavy, but 
it was so clumsy that the boys had hard work 
carrying it over the rough ground. After 


204 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


stumbling for a few rods, they cut a long pole 
and slipped it through the handles in the ends 
of the cage. After that they made somewhat 
better progress, although even then they could 
not travel at a very rapid pace. 

“If those fellows have a canoe,” panted 
Mac, “they’ll be down the river before we can 
get to camp!” 

“You may be sure they’ll do their best,” 
said Horace. “These foxes are probably worth 
ten times their winter catch. We’ll have to 
break camp instantly and make for home as 
fast as we can.” 

They went plunging along through the 
thickets, and up and down the rocky hills; it 
was well that the cage was strong. 

After more than an hour of this arduous 
tramping they heard the rush of the river. 
“We’d best scout a little way ahead before 
we go any farther,” Horace declared. 

They set down the cage, crept forward to 
the river and reconnoitered the bank. Their 
canoe was where they had left it, concealed 
behind a cedar thicket, and no other canoe 
was in sight up or down the river. Horace 
swept the shore with the field-glass. 

“Nothing in sight,” he reported. “We may 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 205 


have time to pack our outfit and get off, after 
all. Possibly those fellows have n’t a canoe.” 

They quickly launched the canoe, and put 
the cage of black foxes amidships; Fred sat 
behind it in order to hold it steady. Horace 
took the stern paddle, and Peter the bow. 

The river ran swift and rather shallow, but 
there were no dangerous rapids between them 
and camp. They swept down the current, and 
in a few minutes the tent came in sight. Horace 
took up the glass again, but he could see no 
sign of the trappers. They paddled on, intend- 
ing to land at their usual place, but when they 
were scarcely twenty yards from the tent, Fred 
uttered a suppressed cry. 

“Look! A canoe — lower down!” He spoke 
barely loud enough for his brother to hear him. 
He had caught a glimpse of the bow of a birch 
canoe, which was thrust back almost out of 
sight behind a willow clump below the camp- 
ground. 

“Run straight past!” Horace commanded, 
instantly. “Dig in your paddle, Mac!” 

The canoe shot forward, and at doubled 
speed swept by the tent. As they passed it a 
man rose from behind a thicket and yelled 
hoarsely: — 


206 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 

“Stop, there! Halt!” 

Bang! went a rifle somewhere behind them, 
and then the rapid crack! crack! crack! of 
more than one repeater. A bullet clipped 
through the sides of the canoe, fortunately 
well above the water-line. Another glanced 
from a rock, and hummed past them. 

As the boys whirled by the ambushed birch 
canoe, Fred snatched up the shotgun, and sent 
two loads of buckshot tearing through its sides. 

“That’ll cripple them for a while!” he cried. 

Bang! A better-aimed bullet dashed the 
steering paddle from Horace’s hands. The 
canoe swerved, and heeled in the current. 
Horace snatched the extra paddle that lay in 
the stern, and brought the craft round just 
in time to prevent it from upsetting. As the 
paddle that had been hit floated past, Fred 
picked it up; it had a round hole through the 
handle. 

The canoe was a hundred yards from the 
tent now, and was going so fast that it offered 
no easy target to the men behind, who, how- 
ever, still continued to shoot. Another bullet 
nicked the stern. Glancing over his shoulder, 
Fred saw the three trappers running down 
the shore, and firing as they ran. But in an- 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 207 


other moment the canoe swept round a bend 
in the river, and was screened from the trap- 
pers by the wooded shore. 

“Keep it up! Make all the speed you can!” 
cried Horace. 

Down the fast current they shot like an 
arrow. As they went round another curve, 
they heard the roar of rushing water ahead; 
a short but turbulent rapid confronted them. 
There the river, foaming and surging, dashed 
down over the black rocks; the shore was 
rough and covered with dense thickets. The 
boys remembered the hard work they had had 
making a portage here on the way up; but 
there was no time to make a portage now. 

“Down we go! Look sharp for her bow, 
Mac!” Horace sang out. 

The rush of the rapid seemed to snatch up 
the canoe like a leaf. Fred caught his breath; 
the pit of his stomach seemed to sink. There 
was a deafening roar all around him, a chaos 
of white water, flying spray, and sharp rocks 
that sprang up and flashed behind. Then, be- 
fore he had recovered his breath, they shot 
out into the smooth river below. 

Six inches of water was slopping in the 
bottom of the canoe, but they ran on without 


208 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


stopping to bale it out. For over half a mile 
the smooth, swift current lasted; then came 
another rapid. It was longer and more danger- 
ous than the other, and the boys carried the 
canoe and the foxes round it. They would 
not risk spilling the precious cage, and for the 
present they thought that they had outrun 
their pursuers. 

For another mile or two they descended 
the river, until they came to another carry. 
They made the portage, and stopped at the 
bottom to discuss their situation and make 
their plans. They had escaped the trappers, 
indeed, and they had the foxes; but except the 
canoe, a blanket, the guns, and the light axe 
that Mac had at his belt, they had nothing else. 

“I guess this settles our prospecting, boys,” 
said Horace. “What are we to do now? Shall 
we go on, or — ” 

“Or what?” Fred asked, as his brother 
stopped. 

“I hardly know. But here we are, without 
supplies, and at least a hundred and fifty miles 
from any place where we can get them. We 
all know what a hard road it is, and going back 
it’ll be up-stream all the way, after we leave 
this river.” 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 209 


“ Do we have to go back the way we came? ” 

“Well, instead of turning up the Missanabie 
River when we come to it, we might go straight 
down it to Moose Factory, the Hudson Bay 
Company’s post at the mouth; but if we did 
that, these foxes would never live till we got 
back to Toronto. It would be too long and 
hard a trip for them.” 

“That settles it. We don’t go that way,” 
said Mac. “Surely we can get home in ten or 
twelve days the way we came, and we ought 
to be able to kill enough to live on during 
that time.” 

“How many cartridges have we?” asked 
Horace dubiously. 

Macgregor had nineteen cartridges in his 
belt, and there were six more in the magazine 
of the rifle. Fred had only ten shells in his 
pockets, and the shotgun was empty. They 
had left the fishing tackle at camp, but luckily 
they had plenty of matches. 

“If we can get a deer within the next day or 
so, or even a few ducks or partridges, we may 
make it,” said Horace. “But I’ve noticed 
that game is always scarce when you need it 
most. Now if we turned back and tried to 
recover our outfit, we should certainly have 


210 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


to fight the trappers, and probably we’d be 
worsted, for they outmatch us in weapons. 
One of us might be killed, and we’d be almost 
certain to lose the foxes.” 

“Trade these foxes for some flour and bacon? 
I’d starve first!” said Fred. 

“So would I!” cried Macgregor. “But we 
won’t starve. We did n’t starve last winter, 
when we had n’t a match or a grain of powder, 
and when the mercury was below zero most 
of the time, too.” 

“Well, we’ll go on, if you say so,” said 
Horace. “It’s a mighty dangerous trip, but 
I don’t see what else we can do.” 

“Forward it is, then!” cried Fred. 

“And hang the risk!” exclaimed Mac, 
springing up to push the canoe into the water. 

“Do you think those men will really follow 
us, Horace?” asked Fred. 

“Sure to,” replied his brother. “It’ll take 
them a few hours to patch up their canoe, but 
they ’re probably better canoemen than we are, 
and we’ll have to work mighty hard to keep 
ahead of them.” 

Fred was more optimistic. “They’ll have 
to work mighty hard to keep up with us,” he 
said, as they launched the canoe. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 211 


Going down the river was very different from 
coming up it. The current ran so swiftly that 
the boys could not add much to their speed by 
paddling; all they had to do was to steer the 
craft. The water was so high that they could 
run most of the rapids, and stretches that 
they had formerly toiled up with tumpline or 
tracking-line they now covered with the speed 
of a bullet. 

Toward noon Fred became intolerably hun- 
gry; but neither of the others spoke of eating, 
and he did not mention his hunger. Mac, in 
the bow, put the shotgun where he could easily 
reach it, and scanned the shores for game as 
closely as he could; but no game showed itself. 
They traveled all day without seeing anything 
except now and then a few ducks, which 
always took wing while still far out of range. 

At last they came to “Buck Rapids,” where 
they had shot the deer. The river there was 
one succession of rapids, most of which were 
too dangerous to run through. It was the 
place where, on the way up, they had made 
only four miles in a whole day; and they did 
not cover more than ten miles this afternoon. 

When they came to the long, narrow lake 
on the lower reaches of the river, the sun was 


212 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


setting. They were all pretty much exhausted 
with the toil and excitement of the day. 

“I vote we stop here,” said Mac. “There’ll 
be a moon toward midnight, and we can go 
on then. We ought to get some sleep.” 

“I’m too hungry to sleep,” said Fred. 

“Well, so am I,” Mac admitted. “But we 
can rest, anyway.” 

So they drew up the canoe and lighted a 
fire, partly from force of habit and partly to 
drive away the mosquitoes. They carefully 
lifted the fox cage ashore. 

“We’ve nothing for them to eat,” Horace 
said anxiously, “but they ought to have 
water, at any rate.” 

The difficulty was that they had nothing to 
put water into. Mac made a sort of cup from 
an old envelope, and filled it with water, but 
the animals shrank away and would not touch 
it. Feeling sure, however, that they must be 
thirsty, the boys carried the cage to the river, 
and set one end of it into the shallow water. 
For a few minutes the mother fox was shy, 
but presently she drank eagerly; then the cubs 
dipped their sharp noses into the water. 

The boys spread their only blanket on a 
few hemlock boughs and lay down. Although 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 213 


they were so thoroughly tired, none of them 
could sleep. Fred’s stomach was gnawed by 
hunger; he was still much excited, and in the 
rush of the river he fancied every minute or 
two that he heard the trappers approaching. 

They lay there for some time, talking at 
intervals, and at last Mac got up restlessly. 
He threw fresh wood on the fire, in order to 
make a bright blaze; then from an old pine log 
close by he began to cut a number of resinous 
splinters. When he had collected a large hand- 
ful of them, he went down to the canoe, and 
tried to fix them in the ring in the bow of the 
craft. 

“What in the world are you doing?” asked 
Fred, who had got up to see what Peter was 
about. 

Peter hammered the bundle of splinters 
home. “If we don’t get meat in twelve hours 
we won’t be able to travel fast — can’t keep up 
steam,” he said. “There’s only one way to 
shoot game at night, and that’s — ” 

“Jack light,” said Horace, who recognized 
the device. “It’s a regular pot-hunter’s trick, 
but pot-hunters we are, and no mistake about 
that. I only hope it works.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


Here where deer were plentiful and hunt- 
ers scarce, Mac’s jack light should prove ef- 
fective. Sportsmen and the law have quite 
properly united in condemning killing deer 
by jack light; but the boys felt that their need 
of food justified their course. 

After adjusting the torch, Mac cut a birch 
sapling about eight feet long, and trimmed off 
the twigs. Bending it into a semicircle, he 
fitted the curve into the bottom of the canoe, 
close to the bow; then he hung the blanket by 
its corners upon the projecting tips of the sap- 
ling, and thus screened the bow from the rest 
of the canoe. 

As it had already become dark, and the 
shores were now black with the indistinct 
shadows of the spruces, Fred and Horace set 
the canoe gently into the water. When it was 
afloat, Mac lighted the pine splinters, which 
crackled and flared up like a torch. 

“You’d make a better game poacher than 
I, Horace,” he said. “You take the rifle, and 
I’ll paddle.” 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 215 


Horace accordingly placed himself just be- 
hind the blanket screen, with the weapon on 
his knees. Mac sat in the stern, and Fred, 
who did not want to be left behind, seated 
himself amidships. 

“Keep a sharp lookout, both of you,” Mac 
said. “Watch for the light on their eyes, like 
two balls of fire.” 

The canoe, keeping about thirty yards from 
shore, glided silently down the long lake. The 
“fat” pine flamed smoky and red, and it cast 
long, wavering reflections on the water. Once 
an animal, probably a muskrat, startled them 
by diving noisily. A duck, sleeping on the 
water, rose with a frantic splutter and flurry 
of wings. Then, fifty yards farther, there 
was a sudden splash near the shore, then a 
crashing in the bushes, and a dying thump- 
thump in the distance. 

Horace swung his rifle round, but he was too 
late. The deer had not stopped to stare at 
the light for an instant. A jack light ought 
to have a reflector, but the boys had no means 
of contriving one. 

Unspeakably disappointed, they moved 
slowly on again. They started no more game, 
and at last reached the lower end of the lake. 


216 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


Here Mac stopped to renew the torch, which 
had almost burned out. 

Then they turned up the other side of the 
lake, on the home stretch. No living thing 
except themselves seemed to be on the water 
that night. The shore shoaled far out. Once 
the keel scraped over a bottom of soft mud. 
Lilies grew along the shore, and sometimes 
extended out so far that the canoe brushed the 
half -grown pads. 

Suddenly Fred felt the canoe swerve slightly, 
and head toward the land. Horace raised the 
rifle. Fred had seen nothing, but after strain- 
ing his eyes ahead, he made out two faint spots 
of light in the darkness, at about the height of 
a man’s head. Could it be a deer? The balls 
of light remained perfectly motionless. 

Without a splash the canoe glided closer. 
Fred thought that he could make out the out- 
line of the animal’s head, and clenched his 
hands in anxiety. Why did not Horace shoot? 

Suddenly a blinding flash blazed out from 
the rifle, and the report crashed across the 
water. There was a splash, followed immedi- 
ately by a noise of violent thrashing in the 
water near the land. 

Fred and Mac shouted together. With great 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 217 

paddle strokes, Mac drove the canoe forward, 
and at last Horace leaped out. The others 
followed him. The deer was down, struggling 
in the water. It was dead before they reached 
it. Horace’s bullet had broken its neck. 

“Hurrah!” Fred cried. “This makes us 
safe. This ’ll last us all the way home.” 

It was a fine young buck — so heavy that 
they had hard work to lift it into the canoe. 
Far up the lake they could see their camp-fire, 
and they paddled toward it with the haste of 
half -starved men. 

Without stopping to cut up the animal, 
they skinned one haunch and cut off slices, 
which they set to broil over the coals. A 
delicious odor rose; the boys did not even 
wait until the meat had cooked thoroughly. 
They had no salt, but the venison, unseasoned 
as it was, seemed delicious. 

The food gave them all more cheerfulness 
and energy. The prospect of a hard ten days’ 
journey did not look so bad now. At any rate, 
they would not starve. 

“I wonder if the foxes would eat it. They 
ought to have something,” said Fred, and he 
dropped some scraps of the raw venison into 
the cage. 


218 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


As he stooped to peer more closely at the 
animals, he made a startling discovery. Dur- 
ing their absence on the hunt, the mother fox 
had been gnawing vigorously at the willow 
cage, particularly at the rawhide lashings that 
bound the framework together. She had loos- 
ened one corner, and if she had been left 
alone for another hour, she might have es- 
caped with her cubs. It gave the boys a bad 
fright. Mac refastened the lashings with strips 
of deer-hide, and strengthened the cage with 
more willow withes. But the boys realized 
that in the future one of them would have to 
stand guard over the cage at night. 

The foxes refused to touch the raw meat. 

“I did n’t expect them to eat for the first 
day or two,” said Horace. “Don’t worry. 
They’ll eat in time, when they get really 
hungry.” 

“Let’s get this buck cut up,” said Mac. 
“It’ll soon be moonrise, and we must be 
moving.” 

In order to get more light for their work, 
they piled pitch pine on the fire; then they 
hung the deer on a tree, and began the dis- 
agreeable task of skinning and dressing the 
animal. When they had finished, they had a 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 219 


good deerskin and nearly two hundred pounds 
of fresh meat. 

They would gladly have slept now, but the 
sky was brightening in the east with the rising 
moon, and there was no time for rest. No 
doubt the trappers were on their trail, some- 
where behind them. Hastily the boys loaded 
the foxes and the venison into the canoe, and 
as soon as the moon showed above the trees 
paddled down the lake. They soon found that 
the moonlight was not bright enough to enable 
them to run rapids safely, and they conse- 
quently had to make frequent carries. Between 
the rapids they shot swiftly down the current, 
but the river was so broken that they made 
no great progress that night. 

Northern summer nights are short, and soon 
after two o'clock the sky began to lighten. By 
three o’clock the boys could see well, and they 
went on faster, shooting all except the worst 
stretches of rough water. Shorty after six 
o’clock they came out from the Smoke River 
into the Missanabie. 

“ Stop for breakfast? ” asked Mac. 

“Not here,” said Horace. “We must be 
careful not to mark our trail, especially at this 
point. They won’t know for sure whether 


220 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


we turned up the Missanabie or down, and 
they may make a mistake and lose a lot of 
time. A canoe does n’t leave any track, and 
we must n’t land until we have to.” 

Now the hard work of “bucking the river” 
began again. The Missanabie had lowered 
somewhat since the boys had come down it, but 
it still ran so strong that they could not make 
much progress by paddling. Their canoe 
poles were far back on the Smoke River, and 
they did not dare to land in order to cut others, 
for in doing so they would mark their trail. 

Straining hard at every stroke, they dug 
their paddles into the water; but they made 
slow work of it. The least carelessness on 
their part would cause them to lose in one 
minute as much as they had gained in ten. 

A stretch of slacker water gave them some 
respite; but then came a long, tumbling, rock- 
strewn rapid. 

“We’ll have to portage here,” said Mac. 

“ It ’ll be a long carry,” Horace said. “ We ’d 
lose a good deal of time over it. I think we 
can track her up.” 

Mac and Horace carried the cage of foxes 
along the shore to the head of the broken 
water, and Fred carried up the guns. Return- 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 221 


in g to the foot of the rapid, they prepared to 
haul the canoe against the stream. Luckily 
the tracking-line had always been kept in the 
canoe. Horace tied it to the ring in the bow, 
took the end of the rope and, bracing himself 
firmly, waded into the water; Macgregor and 
Fred, on either side, held the craft steady. 

The bed of the river was very irregular. 
Sometimes the water was no more than knee- 
deep; sometimes it reached their hips. The 
water was icy cold, and the rush and roar of 
the current were bewildering. Once Mac lost 
his footing, but he clung to the canoe and 
recovered himself. Then, when halfway up 
the rapid, Horace stepped on an unsteady 
stone and plunged down, face forward, into 
the roaring water. 

As the towline slackened, the canoe swung 
round with a jerk against Macgregor, and 
upset him. Fred tried to hold it upright, but 
the unstable craft went over like a shot. 

Out went the venison and everything else 
that was in her. Fred made a desperate clutch 
at the stern of the canoe, caught it and held 
on. As the canoe shot down the rapid, he 
trailed out like a streamer behind it. He heard 
a faint, smothered yell: — 


ZM NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“The venison! Save the meat ! ” 

Almost before he knew it, Fred, half choked, 
still clinging to the canoe, drifted into the tail 
of the rapid. He found bottom there, for the 
water was not deep, and managed to right the 
canoe. By that time Macgregor had got to his 
feet, and was coming down the shore to help 
Fred. They were both dripping and chilled; 
but they got into the canoe, and poling with 
two sticks, set out to rescue what they could. 

They must, above everything else, recover 
the venison, but they could see no sign of it. 
Some distance down the stream they found 
both paddles afloat, and they worked the canoe 
up and down below the rapid. On a jutting 
rock they found the deerskin. Finally they 
came upon one of the hindquarters floating 
sluggishly almost under water. They rescued 
it joyfully; but although they searched for a 
long time, they found no more of the meat. 

They had left the axe in the canoe, and it 
was now somewhere at the bottom of the river. 
They could better have spared one of the 
guns, but they were thankful that their loss 
had been no greater. 

“If we had left the foxes in the canoe,” said 
Fred, “they’d have been drowned, sure!” 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 223 


Horace had waded ashore, and now had a 
brisk fire going. Fred and Macgregor joined 
him, and the three boys stood shivering by the 
blaze, with their wet clothes steaming. 

“We’re well out of it,” said Horace, with 
chattering teeth. “The worst is the loss of the 
axe. It won’t be easy to make fires from now 
on. 

Once more the problem of supplies loomed 
dark before the boys. They had nothing now 
except the haunch of venison, which weighed 
perhaps twenty-five pounds; unless they could 
pick up more game, that would have to last 
them until they reached civilization. However, 
they were fairly confident that they could find 
game soon, and meanwhile they could put 
themselves on rations. 

“ We ’ve marked our trail all right now,” said 
Mac. “These tracks and this fire will give it 
away. We may as well portage, after all.” 

Their clothing was far from dry, but they 
were afraid to delay longer. None of them felt 
like trying to wade up the rapid again, and so 
they carried the canoe round it. At the head 
of the portage they cut several strong poles to 
use in places where they could not paddle. 

They soon found that without the poles they 


224 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


could hardly have made any progress at all; 
and even with them they moved very slowly. 
About noon they landed, broiled and ate a 
small piece of venison, and after a brief rest 
set out on their journey again. 

By five o’clock they were all dead tired, wet, 
and chilled, and Mac and Fred were ready to 
stop. Horace, however, urged them to push 
on. He felt that perhaps the beaver trappers 
were not many miles behind. After another 
day or two, he said, they could take things 
more easily, but now they ought to hurry on at 
top speed. 

Just before they were ready to land in order 
to make camp, three ducks splashed from the 
water just in front of the canoe. Fred managed 
to drop one of them with each barrel of the shot 
gun. Thus the boys got their supper without 
having to draw on their supply of venison; but 
the roasted ducks proved almost as tough as 
rawhide and, without salt, extremely unpala- 
table. But they were all so hungry that they 
devoured the birds almost completely; they 
put the heads into the willow cage, but the 
foxes would not touch them. 

For three hours more they pushed on up the 
river, tired, silent, but determined. At last it 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 225 


began to grow dark. The boys had reached the 
limit of their endurance, for they had had no 
sleep the night before. They landed and built 
a fire. It was hard work to get enough wood 
without the axe, but fortunately the night was 
not cold. 

Exhausted as the boys were, they knew that 
one of them would have to stand watch to see 
that the foxes did not gnaw their way out of 
the cage, and that the trappers did not attack 
the camp. They drew lots for it; Macgregor 
selected the short straw and Fred the long one, 
and they arranged that Mac should take the 
watch for two hours, then Horace, and lastly 
Fred. 

The mosquitoes were bad, and there were 
no blankets, but Fred seemed to go to sleep 
the moment he lay down on the earth. He 
did not hear Horace and Mac change guard at 
midnight, and it seemed to him that he had 
scarcely done more than close his eyes when 
some one shook him by the arm. 

“Wake up! It’s your turn to watch !” 
Horace was saying. 

Half dead with sleep, Fred staggered to his 
feet. Moonlight lay on the forest and river. 

“Take the rifle,” said Horace. “There’s 


226 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 

not been a sign of anything stirring, but keep 
a sharp eye on the foxes.” 

Horace lay down beside Mac and seemed to 
fall asleep at once. Fred would have given 
black foxes and diamonds together to do like- 
wise, but he walked up and down until he felt 
less drowsy. The foxes were not trying to 
get out, and he saw that they had gnawed the 
duck heads down to the bills. 

He sat down against a tree, close to the 
cage, with the loaded repeater across his knees. 
For some time the mosquitoes, as well as the 
responsibility of his position, kept him awake. 

Every sound in the forest startled him; 
through the dash of the river he imagined 
that he heard the sound of paddles. But by 
degrees he grew indifferent to the mosquitoes, 
and his strained attention flagged. Drowsiness 
crept upon him again; he was very tired. He 
found himself nodding, and roused himself 
with a shock of horror. He thought that he 
would go down to the river and dip his head 
into the water. He dozed while he was think- 
ing of it — dozed and awoke, and dozed again. 

Then after what seemed a moment’s interval 
he was awakened by a harsh voice shouting: — 

“Hands up! Wake up, and surrender!” 


CHAPTER XV 


Half awake, Fred made a blind snatch at 
the rifle that had been across his lap. It was 
gone. 

The sky was bright with dawn. Ten feet 
away stood three men with leveled rifles. 
Horace and Mac were sitting up, holding their 
hands above their heads and looking dazed. 

“I said you pups would n’t bark so loud next 
time,” remarked one of the newcomers. It 
was the man that had pretended to be a ranger. 
With him was the slim, dark fellow whom they 
had seen outside the trappers’ shack, and the 
third was a tall, elderly, bearded man, who 
looked more intelligent and more vicious than 
the others. 

None of the boys said anything, but Horace 
gave Fred a reproachful glance that almost 
broke his heart. It was his fault that this 
had happened, and he knew it. Tears of rage 
and shame started to his eyes. He looked 
about desperately for a weapon. He would 
gladly risk his life to get his companions out 
of the awkward scrape into which his negli- 


228 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


gence had plunged them. But the ranger had 
taken the boys’ rifle, and the half-breed had 
picked up the shotgun. 

With a grin of triumph the trappers went to 
the fox cage, peered at the animals, and talked 
eagerly in low voices. The boys watched them 
in suspense. Were they going to kill the foxes? 

Presently two of the men picked up the cage 
and carried it down to the river. The light 
was strong enough now so that Fred could 
see the bow of a bark canoe drawn up on the 
shore. They put the cage into the canoe. 
Then the half-breed laid his rifle and the stolen 
shotgun beside it, and paddled down the river. 
The other two men lifted the boys’ Peterboro 
into the water. 

“You are n’t going to rob us of our firearms 
and our canoe, too, are you?” cried Horace 
desperately. “You might as well murder us!” 

“Guess you won’t need the guns,” said the 
third trapper. “You’ve got grub, I see, and 
we durst n’t leave you any canoe to foller us 
up in.” 

The two men pushed off the Peterboro and 
followed the birch canoe down the river at a 
rapid pace. In two minutes they were out of 
sight round a bend. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 229 


There was a dead silence. Fred could not 
meet the eyes of his companions. He turned 
away, pretended to look for something, and 
fairly broke down. 

“Brace up, Fred!” said his brother. “It 
can’t be helped, and we’re not blaming you. 
It might have happened to any of us.” 

“If you’d been awake you might have got 
shot,” said Mac, “and that would have been 
a good deal worse for every one concerned.” 

But Fred was inconsolable. Through his 
tears, he stammered that he wished he had 
been shot. They had lost the foxes, they 
were stranded and destitute, and they stood a 
good chance of never getting out alive. 

“Nonsense!” said Mac, with forced cheer- 
fulness. “We were in a far worse fix last 
winter, and we came out on top.” 

“The first thing to do is to have some 
grub,” added Horace. “Then we’ll talk about 
it.” 

Looking with calculating eyes at the lump 
of meat, he cut the slices of venison very thin. 
There was about twenty pounds left. They 
roasted the meat he had cut off, and ate it; 
then Horace unfolded his pocket map and 
spread it on the ground. 


230 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


They were probably forty miles from the 
Height of Land. It was twelve miles across 
the long carry, and at least forty more to the 
nearest inhabited point — almost a hundred 
miles in all. There was a chance, however, 
that they might meet some party of prospec- 
tors or Indians. 

“It’s terribly rough traveling afoot,” said 
Horace. “We could hardly make it in less 
than two weeks. Besides, our shoes are nearly 
gone now.” 

“And that piece of venison will never last 
us for two weeks ! ” cried Macgregor. 

“Oh, you can often knock down a partridge 
with a stick,” said Horace. 

“If we only had a canoe!” Mac exclaimed, 
with a burst of rage. “I’d run those thieves 
down if I had to follow them to Hudson Bay!” 

They all agreed on that point, but it was 
useless to think of following them without a 
canoe. The boys would have all they could 
do to save their own lives; a hundred-mile 
journey on foot across that wilderness, with- 
out arms and with almost no provisions, was 
a desperate undertaking. 

“Well, we’ve got no choice,” said Horace, 
after a dismal silence. “We must put our- 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 231 


selves on rations of about half a pound of 
meat a day, and we’ll lay a bee-line course 
by the compass for the trail over the Height 
of Land.” 

He marked the course on the map, and the 
boys studied it in silence. The sun had risen 
by this time, but the boys were not anxious 
to break camp and start on that journey which 
would perhaps prove fatal to all of them. 
They lingered, talking, discussing, hesitating, 
reluctant to make the start. 

Fred had not contributed a single word to 
the discussion. He had barely managed to 
swallow a little breakfast, and was too miser- 
able to join in the talk. He knew how slim 
their chances were; he imagined how the 
party would struggle on, growing weaker 
daily, until — 

If only they had a canoe! If only they 
could run the robbers down and ambush them 
in their turn! And as he puzzled on the 
problem, an idea — an inspiration — flashed 
into his mind. 

He bent over, and studied the map intently 
for a second. 

“Look! Look here!” he cried, wildly. 
“What fools we are! We can overtake those 


232 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


fellows — catch ’em — cut ’em off before they 
get anywhere — and get back our grub, and 
the foxes, and the canoe — everything — 
why — ” 

“What’s that? What do you mean?” cried 
Horace and Mac together. 

Fred placed a trembling finger on the map. 

“See, this is where we are, is n’t it? Those 
thieves will go down here to the mouth of the 
Smoke River, and turn up it to their camp. 
They did n’t have much outfit with them; so 
they’ll go back to their shanty. It’s about 
fifty miles round by the way they ’ll go, but if 
we cut straight across country — this way — 
we’d strike the Smoke in twenty-five miles, 
and be there before them.” 

“I do believe you’ve hit something, Fred!” 
Mac exclaimed. 

In fact, the Smoke and the Missanabie 
Rivers made the arms of an acute angle. 
Between twenty and thirty miles straight to 
the northwest would bring them out on the 
former stream somewhere in the neighborhood 
of “Buck Rapids.” 

“Let’s see!” calculated Horace hurriedly. 
“They can run down to the mouth of the 
Smoke in a few hours from here. After that 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 233 

it’ll be slower work, but they’ll have the 
portage trails that we cut, and they ought to 
get up beyond the long lake by this evening. 
Can we get across in time to head ’em off?” 

“We must. Of course we can!” Fred in- 
sisted. “It’s our only chance, and you both 
know it. We never could get home with our 
boots gone, and with the food we have, but 
this venison will last us across to the Smoke.” 

“Patch our boots up with the deerskin!” 
cried Mac. “We’ll ambush ’em. We’ll catch 
’em on a hard carry. Only let me get my 
hands on ’em!” 

“Then we haven’t a minute to lose!” said 
Horace. 

“Let’s be off!” cried Fred, springing up. 

First of all, however, they repaired their 
tattered boots by folding pieces of the raw 
deerhide round them and lashing them in place 
with thongs. It was clumsy work at the best; 
but Mac rolled up the rest of the hide to take 
with him, in case they should have to make 
further repairs. 

Horace consulted the map and the com- 
pass again, and picked up the lump of veni- 
son, which, with the deerskin, constituted their 
only luggage. In less than half an hour from 


234 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 

the time Fred had hit upon his plan they 
were off, running through the undergrowth on 
the twenty-five-mile race to the Smoke River. 

None of them knew what sort of country 
the course would pass over. The map for that 
part of the region was incomplete and no more 
than approximately accurate, so that the boys 
were not at all sure that their guess at the 
distance to the Smoke River was correct. But 
they did know that now that they had started 
on the race, their lives depended upon their 
winning it. Fred took the lead at once, tear- 
ing through the thickets, tripping, stumbling. 

“Easy, there!” called Horace. “We must n’t 
do ourselves up at the start.” 

Fred slackened his pace somewhat, but con- 
tinued to keep in front. For nearly a mile 
from the river the land sloped gently upward 
through dense thickets of birch. Then the 
birches thinned, and finally gave way to 
evergreen, and the rising ground became rough 
with gravel and rock. The slope changed to 
undulating billows of hills, covered with stone 
of every size, from gravel to small boulders, 
and over it all grew a stubbly jungle of cedar 
and jack-pine, seldom more than six feet high. 

It was a rough, broken country, and the 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 235 


boys had to slacken their pace somewhat; to 
make things worse, it presently began to rain. 
First came a driving drizzle, then a heavy 
downpour, with a strong southwest wind. 
The rocks streamed with water, and the boys 
were drenched; but the heavy rain presently 
settled again to a soaking drizzle that threat- 
ened to continue all day. 

Through the rain they struggled ahead; 
sometimes they found a clear space where they 
could run; sometimes they came upon wet, 
tangled shrubbery that impeded them sadly. 
They kept hoping for easier traveling; but 
those broken, rocky hills stretched ahead for 
miles. At last the trees became even more 
sparse, and the boys encountered a whole hill- 
side covered with a mass of split rock. 

Over this litter of sandstone they crawled 
and stumbled at what seemed a snail’s pace. 
They were desperately anxious to hurry, but 
they knew that a slip on those wet rocks 
might mean a broken leg. 

A rain-washed slope of gravel came next; 
they went down it at a trot, and then encoun- 
tered another hillside covered with huge, loose 
stones. They scrambled over it as best they 
could, and ran down another slope; then trees 


236 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


became more abundant, and soon they were 
again traveling over low, rolling hills clothed 
in jack-pine scrub. 

With marvelous endurance Fred still held 
the lead. He went as if driven by machinery, 
with his head down and his lips clenched; he 
did not speak a word. He was supposed to be 
the weakest of the party, but even Macgregor, 
a trained cross-country runner, found himself 
falling farther and farther behind. 

At eleven o’clock Horace called a halt. The 
rain had almost stopped, and the boys, lighting 
a small fire, roasted generous slices of venison. 
There was no need of sparing the meat now. 
Either plenty of food or death was at the end 
of the journey. 

No sooner had they eaten it than Fred 
sprang up again. 

“How you fellows can sit here I can’t 
understand!” he exclaimed, nervously. “I’m 
going on. Are you coming?” 

Mac and Horace followed him. The land 
seemed to be sloping continually to lower lev- 
els; the woods thickened into a sturdy, tan- 
gled growth of hemlock and tamarack that 
they had hard work to penetrate. They pres- 
ently caught a glimpse of water ahead, and 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 237 


came to the shore of a small, narrow lake that 
curved away between rounded, dark hillsides. 

They had to go round the lake, and lost 
two or three miles by the detour. As they 
hurried up the shore a bull moose sprang from 
the water, paused an instant to look back, and 
crashed into the thickets. It would have been 
an easy shot if they had had the rifle. 

Round the end of the lake low hills rose 
abruptly from the shore. After scrambling up 
the slippery slope of the hills they reached the 
top, and saw ahead of them an endless stretch 
of wild hills and forests; there was not a land- 
mark that they recognized. 

Horace guessed that they had come about 
fifteen miles. Mac thought that it was much 
more. They agreed that they had broken the 
back of the journey, and that if their strength 
held out, they could reach the Smoke that day. 

“Suppose we were — to find the diamond- 
beds now!” said Mac, between quick breaths. 

“Don’t talk to me about diamonds!” said 
Horace. “I never want to hear the word 
again.” 

On they went, up and down the hills, 
through the thickets and over the ridges; but 
they no longer went with the energy they had 


238 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


shown in the morning. With every mile their 
pace grew slower, and they were all beginning 
to limp. Fred still kept in front, with his 
face set in grim determination. About the 
middle of the afternoon Horace came up with 
him, stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, 
and looked into his face. 

Fred’s eyes were bright and feverish. His 
face was pale and spotted with red blotches, 
and he breathed heavily through his open 
mouth. 

“ You ’ve got to stop ! ” said his brother firmly. 
“You ’re going on your nerves. A little farther, 
and you’ll collapse — go down like a shot.” 

“I — I’m all right!” said Fred thickly. 
“Got to get on — got to make it in time!” 

But Horace was firm. First they built a 
smudge to keep off the flies; then they made 
fresh repairs to their shoes; and finally they 
stretched themselves flat to rest. But in spite 
of their fatigue, they were too highly strung 
to stay quiet. They knew that a delay of 
an hour might lose the race for them. After 
resting for less than half an hour, they got 
up and went plunging through the woods 
again. 

They believed now that the Smoke River 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 239 


could not be more than five or six miles away. 
From every hilltop they hoped to catch sight 
of it, or at least to see some spot that they 
had passed while prospecting. 

But although all the landscape seemed 
strange, they doggedly continued the struggle. 
The sun was sinking low over the western 
ridges now; toiling desperately on, they left 
mile after mile behind, but still the Smoke 
River did not come into sight. At last Mac- 
gregor sat down abruptly upon a log. 

“I’d just as soon die here as anywhere,” 
he said. 

“You’re right. We’ll stop, and go on by 
moonrise,” said Horace. “Grub’s what we 
need now.” 

“Why, we’re almost at the end! We can’t 
stop now!” Fred cried. 

“We won’t lose anything,” said his brother. 
“The trappers will be camping, too, about this 
time. If we don’t rest now we’ll probably 
never get to the Smoke at all.” 

Staggering with fatigue, he set about getting 
wood for a fire. Mac and Fred helped him, 
and when they had built a fire they broiled 
some of the deer meat. Fred could hardly 
touch the food. Horace and Macgregor ate 


240 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


only a little, and almost as they ate they 
nodded, and dropped asleep from sheer fa- 
tigue. 

Fred knew that he, too, ought to sleep, but 
he could not even lie down. His brain burned, 
his muscles twitched, and he felt strung like 
a taut wire. Leaving his companions asleep, 
he started to scout ahead. He went like one 
in a dream, hardly conscious of anything except 
the overwhelming necessity of getting forward. 
His course took him over a wooded ridge and 
down a hillside, and at last he came upon a 
tiny creek. Stumbling, sometimes falling, but 
always pushing on, he followed the course of 
the creek for a mile or two; suddenly he found 
himself on the shore of a large and rapid river, 
into which the creek emptied. 

Furious at the obstacle, he looked for a 
place where he could cross the river. 

It was too deep for him to wade across it, 
and too swift for him to swim it. He hurried 
up the bank, looking for a place where he 
could ford it, and at last came to a stretch of 
short, violent rapids. 

He was about to turn back when he caught 
sight of axe marks in the undergrowth. Some 
one had cut a trail for the carry round the 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 241 


rapid. He stared at the axe marks, and 
then at the river. Suddenly his dazed brain 
cleared. 

He recognized the spot. He recognized the 
trail that he himself had helped to cut. He 
had found the Smoke River! 


CHAPTER XVI 


Fred never quite knew how he got back 
to camp after he had found the river. He 
found his companions still sound asleep, but 
it did not take him long to rouse them and 
to tell them the news. 

“I could n’t see any tracks on the shore. I 
don’t think any one has passed,” Fred said. 

In less than a minute the boys, wild with 
joy, were hurrying through the woods again. 
It was almost dark when they reached the 
river; peering close to the ground they exam- 
ined the trail carefully, to make sure that the 
trappers had not already passed. 

The heavy rain had washed the shores, and 
no fresh tracks showed in the mud. The men 
had not been over the portage that day, and 
they could hardly have passed the rapids with- 
out making a carry. They had evidently 
camped for the night at some point below, and 
would not come up the river until morning. 

After piling up some hemlock boughs for 
a bed, the boys lay down, and dropped into a 
heavy sleep. Now that the strain was over, 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 243 


Fred slept, too. In fact, for the last quarter 
of an hour he had hardly been able to stay on 
his feet. 

In the gray dawn Horace awakened them. 
They were stiff from their thirty-mile race of 
the day before, and their feet were swollen. 
Hot food — especially hot tea — was what they 
longed for; but they were afraid to make a 
fire, and they had to content themselves with 
a little raw venison for their breakfast. 

Horace thought that they could make their 
ambush where they were as well as anywhere 
else. The portage was about thirty yards 
long, and the narrow trail passed over a ridge 
and ran through dense hemlock thickets. If 
the trappers came up the trail in single file, 
carrying heavy loads, they could not use their 
rifles against a sudden attack. 

The boys armed themselves each with a hard- 
wood bludgeon; then they ensconced them- 
selves in the thickets where they could see the 
reaches of the river below — and waited. 

An hour passed. It was almost sunrise, and 
there was no sign of the trappers on the river. 
The boys grew nervous with dread and anxiety. 
The tree-tops began to glitter with sunlight. 
It was almost six o’clock. 


244 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“Could they have gone some other way?” 
asked Fred uneasily, staring upstream. 

At that very moment Macgregor grasped his 
arm and pointed down the river. Two small 
objects had appeared round a bend, half a 
mile below. They were certainly canoes, 
making slow headway against the stiff current, 
but they were too far away for the boys to 
make them out plainly. Minute by minute 
they grew nearer. 

“The front one’s a Peterboro!” said Mac. 
“There’s one man in it, and two in the other. 
I think I can see the fox cage.” 

Without doubt it was the trappers. The 
young prospectors slipped back through the 
thickets, almost to the upper end of the trail, 
and concealed themselves in the hemlocks. 

“Above all things, try to get hold of their 
guns!” said Horace. 

For a long while they waited in terrible sus- 
pense. They could not see the landing, nor 
at first could they hear anything, for the tum- 
bling water of the rapids roared in their ears. 
After what seemed almost an hour, stumbling 
footsteps sounded near by on the trail, and the 
bow of the Peterboro hove in sight. A man 
was carrying it on his head; he steadied it 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 245 


with one hand, and in the other grasped a 
gun — Horace’s repeating rifle. 

When he was almost within arm’s reach, 
Mac sprang and tackled him low like a foot- 
ball player. The trapper dropped the gun 
with a startled yell, and went over headlong 
into the hemlocks — canoe and all. 

Horace leaped out to seize the gun that the 
man had dropped. Before he could touch it, 
the second trapper rushed up the trail with his 
rifle clubbed. Fred struck out at him with his 
bludgeon. The blow missed the fellow’s head, 
and fell on his arm. Down clattered the rifle, 
discharging as it fell. The trapper made a fran- 
tic leap aside, and disappeared into the bushes. 

As Fred snatched up the rifle, he caught a 
glimpse of the third trapper, the wiry half- 
breed, hastening up the path. 

“Halt! Hands up!” shouted Horace, raising 
the repeater. 

The man stopped, fired a wild shot, turned 
and bolted back toward the landing. Fred 
and his brother rushed after him; they reached 
the landing just in time to see him leap into 
the birch canoe, which still held the fox cage, 
shove off, and digging his paddle furiously into 
the water, shoot down the stream. 


246 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“After him! The canoe! Quick!” shouted 
Horace. 

They dashed back. The man that Fred had 
struck was nowhere to be seen. Macgregor 
had pinned his antagonist to the ground, and 
seemed to have him well subdued. 

“Never mind him, Mac!” Fred cried. 
“Pick up that canoe in a hurry! One of the 
scoundrels has got away with the foxes!” 

All three of them seized the canoe and 
rushed it down to the landing. There they 
found the shore strewn with articles of camp 
outfit where the men had unloaded the canoes. 

“Load it in, boys!” cried Horace. “Take 
what we need. We’re not coming back.” 

They pitched an armful or two of supplies 
into the canoe. Fred’s shotgun was there, 
and several other articles that the boys recog- 
nized as their own. The rest was a fair ex- 
change for the outfit that they had abandoned 
in their tent. 

They shoved the canoe off. The half-breed 
had gained a long lead by this time. He was 
nearly a quarter of a mile ahead, paddling 
frantically; he did not even stop to fire at the 
boys. But there were three paddles in pur- 
suit, and the boys began to gain on him 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 247 


noticeably. More than two miles flashed by, 
and then the roar of rapids sounded ahead. 

“Got him!” panted Mac. “He’ll have to 
land now.” 

Round another bend shot the birch canoe, 
with the Peterboro three hundred yards behind, 
and now the broken water came in sight. It 
was a long, rock-staked chute, and the boys 
thought it would be suicidal to try to run it. 
But the half-breed kept straight on in mid- 
channel. 

“He’s going to try to run through!” Horace 
cried. “He’ll drown himself and the foxes!” 

The boys yelled at him; but the next instant 
the man’s canoe had shot into the broken 
water. For a moment they lost sight of him 
in a cloud of spray; then they saw him half- 
way down the rapids, going like a bullet. 
With incredible skill, he was keeping his craft 
upright. 

The boys drove their canoe toward the land- 
ing, and still watched the man. When he 
was almost through the rapids, they saw his 
canoe shoot bow upward into the air, hang a 
moment, and then go over. 

Shouting with excitement, they dragged the 
canoe ashore, picked it up, and went over the 


248 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


portage at a run. Far down the stream they 
saw the birch canoe floating on its side, near 
the fox cage. They had just launched the 
Peterboro at the tail of the rapids, when they 
saw something black bobbing in the swirling 
water. 

It was the head of the half-breed. He was 
swimming feebly, and when they hauled him 
into the canoe, was almost unconscious. He 
had a great bleeding gash just above his ear, 
where he had struck a rock; but he was not 
seriously injured. The boys paid little atten- 
tion to him, but hastened to rescue their treas- 
ure. When they came up with the birch canoe, 
they found that the fox cage had been lashed 
to it with a strip of deerskin, and, to their great 
relief, that the foxes were there, all four of 
them, alive and afloat. 

They got the cage ashore as quickly as pos- 
sible. The foxes were dripping with water, 
but looked as lively as ever. To all appear- 
ances, the ducking had not hurt them. 

The canoe itself had not come off so well. 
It had a great rent in the bottom, and Hor- 
ace stamped another hole through the bow. 
Then the boys examined their new outfit. 
From their own former store they had a kettle, 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 249 


a frying-pan, a box of rifle-cartridges, and a 
sack of tea. They had taken from the trap- 
pers’ supplies half a sack of flour, a lump of 
salt pork, two blankets, and two rifles. 

The half-breed had recovered his wits by 
this time; sitting on the bank, he glared sav- 
agely at them. 

“You’ll find your partners waiting for you 
up the river,” Horace said to him. “We’ve 
got what we need, and you’ll find the rest of 
your kit on the shore where you unpacked it. 
As for your rifles — ” 

He picked them up and tossed them into six 
feet of water. “By the time you’ve fished 
them out and mended your canoe I guess you 
won’t want to follow us. If you do, you won’t 
catch us napping again, and we’ll shoot you 
on sight. Savez ?” 

The half-breed muttered some sullen re- 
sponse. The boys loaded the fox cage into the 
Peterboro, got in themselves, and shot down 
the river again in a fresh start for home. They 
left the trapper sitting on the rock, glaring 
after them. 

Now that the strain was over and the fight 
won, the boys felt utterly exhausted. They 
kept on at as fast a pace as they could, how- 


250 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


ever, and reached the Missanabie River a little 
after noon. There they stopped to cook dinner. 

Once more they had hot, black voyageurs ’ 
tea, and fried flapjacks, and salt pork. It 
seemed the most delicious meal they had ever 
eaten; but when they had finished, they felt 
too weary to start up the Missanabie, and 
reckless of consequences, they lay down and 
slept for almost two hours. 

Then they continued their journey with 
double energy, and made good progress for the 
rest of the day. 

They were entirely out of fresh meat, and 
had nothing whatever to give the foxes, but 
fortunately Mac shot three spruce grouse that 
evening. They dropped the heads of the birds 
into the cage; the foxes devoured them with a 
voracity that indicated that the trappers had 
fed them nothing. Early the next morning 
Horace by a long shot killed a deer at the 
riverside. 

It was a rough journey up the Missanabie, 
but not nearly so hard as the trip up the Smoke 
River had been. For eight days they paddled, 
poled, tracked, and portaged, until they came 
at last to the point where they had first 
launched the canoe. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 251 


The “long carry” over the Height of Land 
now confronted them. It is true that they 
had by no means so much outfit to carry now, 
but, on the other hand, they had no packers 
to help them. They had to make two journeys 
of it, and, as a further difficulty, one of the 
boys had to remain with the fox cage. As 
they reached the top of the ridge on their first 
journey, Macgregor turned and looked back 
over the wild landscape to the northwest. 

“Somewhere over there,” he murmured, “is 
the diamond country.” 

“Shut up!” exclaimed Horace, in exasper- 
ation. 

“I never want to hear the word ‘diamond’ 
again,” added Fred. 

They left the foxes together with the rest 
of their loads at the end of the “carry,” and 
Fred remained to guard them, while Peter and 
Horace went back for the remainder of the 
outfit. While they were gone Fred noticed that 
one of the cubs was not looking well. It re- 
fused to eat or drink; its fur was losing its 
gloss, and it lay in a sort of a doze most of the 
time. Plainly captivity did not agree with it. 

Horace and Peter were much concerned 
about its condition when they came back. 


252 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


None of them had any idea what to do; in fact 
it is doubtful if the most skilled veterinary 
surgeon could have prescribed. 

“The real trouble is their cramped quar- 
ters, of course,” said Horace. “We must get 
home as quickly as possible, and get them out 
of this and into a larger cage. Some of the 
others will sicken if we don’t look sharp.” 

They made all the speed they could, and, 
now that they were fairly on the canoe route 
south of the Height of Land, they felt that 
they were well toward home. It was down- 
stream now, and portages grew less and less 
frequent as the river grew. They did not 
stop to hunt or fish; the paddled till dusk, and 
were up at dawn. They felt that it was a race 
for the life of the valuable little animal, and 
they did not spare themselves. Two days 
afterward, late in the afternoon, they came 
to the little railway village that had been 
their starting-point. 

The cub seemed no better — worse, if any- 
thing. There was a train for Toronto at eight 
o’clock that night. The boys hurried to the 
hotel where they had left their baggage, and 
changed their tattered woods garments for 
more civilized clothing. There was time to eat 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 253 


a civilized supper, with bread and vegetables 
and jam, — almost forgotten luxuries, — and 
time also to send a telegram to Maurice Stark. 

They carried the cage of foxes to the hotel 
with them, for they were determined henceforth 
not to let the animals out of their sight for a 
moment. The unusual spectacle of the three 
boys with their burden attracted much atten- 
tion, and when the contents of the cage be- 
came known, nearly the whole population of 
the village assembled to have a look. 

The crowd followed them to the depot, and 
saw the foxes put into the baggage-car. They 
had secured permission for one of them to 
ride with the cage and stand guard, and the 
boys took turns at this duty. The other two 
tried to snatch a few hours of rest in the 
sleeper; but the berths seemed stifling and 
airless. Accustomed to the open camp, they 
could not sleep a wink, and were rather more 
fatigued the next morning than when they had 
started. It was still four hours to Toronto, but 
they reached the city at noon. Macgregor was 
standing the last watch in the baggage-car, and 
as Fred and Horace came down the steps of 
the Pullman they saw Maurice Stark pushing 
through the crowd. 


254 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“ What luck? 55 Maurice demanded anxiously, 
lowering his voice as he shook hands. “Did 
you find the — the — ?” 

“Not any diamonds,” replied Fred, with a 
laugh. “But we brought back some black 
gold. Come and see it.” 

They went forward to the platform where 
the baggage was being unloaded. Macgregor 
was helping to hand out the willow cage. It 
looked strangely wild and rough among the 
neat suit-cases and trunks. 

“What in the world have you got there?” 
cried Maurice, peering through the bars. 

Fred and Horace were also looking anxiously 
to learn the condition of the sick cub. 

“Why, he’s dead!” exclaimed Fred, in 
bitter disappointment. 

“Yes,” said Mac; “the little fellow keeled 
over just after I came on guard. I did n’t 
send word to you fellows, for I knew there 
was nothing to be done.” 

The rest of the family were alive and looked 
in good condition. The boys had already de- 
cided what they would do immediately, and, 
calling a cab, they drove with the foxes to the 
house of a well-known naturalist connected 
with the Toronto Zoological Park. He was as 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 255 


competent as any one could be, and be readily 
agreed to take care of the foxes till they should 
be sold. 

Naturally, however, he declined to be re- 
sponsible for their safety, and Horace at once 
attempted to insure their lives. No insurance 
company would accept the risk, but after much 
negotiation he at last managed to effect a 
policy of two thousand dollars for one month, 
on payment of an exorbitant premium. He 
was more successful in getting insurance 
against theft, and took out a policy for ten 
thousand dollars with a burglar insurance 
company, on condition of a day and night 
watchman being employed to guard the ani- 
mals. 

It was plain that the foxes were going to be 
a source of terrible anxiety while they re- 
mained on the boys’ hands. Horace at once 
telegraphed to the manager of one of the largest 
fur-breeding ranches in Prince Edward Island, 
and received a reply saying that a representa- 
tive of the company would call within a few 
days. 

The man turned up three days later, and 
inspected the foxes in a casual and uninter- 
ested way. 


256 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“We’d hardly think of buying,” he re- 
marked. “We’ve got about all the stock we 
need. I was coming to Toronto just when I got 
your wire, and I thought I ’d look in at them. 
What are you thinking of asking for them?” 

“Fifty thousand dollars,” said Horace. 

The fur-trader laughed heartily. 

“You’ll be lucky if you get a quarter of 
that,” he said. “ Why, we bought a fine, full- 
grown black fox last year for five hundred. 
Your cubs are hardly worth anything, you 
know. They’re almost sure to die before they 
grow up.” 

“Professor Forsythe does n’t think so,” re- 
plied Horace. 

“Well, I’m glad I saw them,” said the 
dealer. “If I can hear of a buyer for you I’ll 
send him along, but you ’ll have to come away 
down on your prices. You might let me have 
your address, in case I hear of anything.” 

“It does n’t look as if we were going to sell 
them!” said Fred, who was not used to shrewd 
business dealing. “Perhaps we can’t get any 
price at all.” 

Horace laughed. 

“Oh, that was all bluff. I saw the fellow’s 
eyes light up when he saw these black beauties. 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 257 

He’ll be back to see us within a day or 
two.” 

Sure enough, the man did come back. He 
scarcely mentioned the foxes this time, but 
took the boys out motoring. As they were 
parting he said carelessly, “I think I might get 
you a buyer for your foxes, but he could n’t 
pay over fifteen thousand.” 

“No use in our talking to him then,” re- 
plied Horace, with equal indifference. 

That was the beginning of a series of nego- 
tiations that ran through fully a week. It was 
interspersed with motor rides, dinner parties, 
and other amusements to which the parties 
treated one another alternately. The Prince 
Edward Island man brought himself to make a 
proposal of twenty thousand, and Horace came 
down to thirty-five thousand, and there they 
stuck. Finally Horace came down to thirty. 

“I’ll give you twenty-five,” said the fur- 
breeder at last, “but I think I’ll be losing 
money at that.” 

“I’ll meet you halfway,” replied Horace. 
“Split the difference. Make it twenty-seven 
thousand, five hundred.” 

Both parties were well wearied with bargain- 
ing by this time, and the buyer gave in. 


258 NORTHERN DIAMONDS 


“All right!” he agreed. “You’ll make your 
fortune, young man, if you keep on, for you ’re 
the hardest customer to deal with that I ’ ve 
met this year.” 

The dealer went back next day to the east, 
taking the foxes with him, and leaving with 
the boys a certified check for $27,500. It was 
not as much as they had hoped to clear, but 
it was a small fortune after all. 

“Comes to nearly seven thousand apiece,” 
Fred remarked. 

“Not at all,” remonstrated Maurice. “I 
don’t see where I have any share in it.” 

“Oh, come! We’re rolling in money. You 
must have something out of it. Must n’t he, 
Horace?” 

They knew that Maurice really needed the 
money, and it was not by his own will that he 
had failed to go with the expedition. In the 
end he was persuaded to accept the odd five 
hundred dollars, but he refused to take a cent 
more. The remainder made just nine thousand 
dollars apiece for each of the three other boys. 

“I’ve lost a year’s varsity work,” said 
Peter, “but I guess it was worth it. Nine 
thousand is more than I ever expect to make 
in a year of medical practice. Besides, we know 


NORTHERN DIAMONDS 259 


there are diamonds in that country. Horace 
found them. Why can’t we — ” 

“Shut up!” cried Fred. 

“Take his money away from him!” ex- 
claimed Horace. “I don’t want to hear any 
more of diamonds.” 

“ — And why can’t we make another expedi- 
tion,” continued Peter, “and prospect for — ” 
But Fred and Horace pounced on him, and 
after a violent struggle got him down on the 
couch. 

“Prospect for what?” cried Fred, sitting 
on his chest. 

“Ow — let me up!” gurgled Mac. “Why, 
for — for more black foxes!” 


THE END 


<&be Uttoeitfibe pr 

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 


Dr* Tomlinson's Books 

The American boy will never tire of reading 
tales of the early colonial days and especially of 
the desperate encounters and struggles of the col- 
onists with the natives of the forest. 

Dr. Tomlinson has read widely and has collected 
a mass of incident through family tradition and 
otherwise, which he has skillfully incorporated in 
the historical frameworks of several exceedingly 
interesting and instructive stories. He has the 
knack of mixing history with adventure in such a 
way as to make his young readers absorb much in- 
formation while entertaining them capitally. His 
historical tales are filled with an enthusiasm which 
it is well to foster in the heart of every healthy- 
minded and patriotic American boy. 

The plots are all based upon events that actually 
occurred ; and the boy heroes play the part of men 
in a way to capture the hearts of all boy readers. 
Dr. Tomlinson shows scrupulous regard for the 
larger truths of history, and the same care that 
would naturally go into a book for older readers. 


The Boys of Old Monmouth 

A story of Washington’s campaign in New Jersey 
In 1778. 


A Jersey Boy in the Revolution 

This story is founded upon the lives and deeds of 
t;ome of the humbler heroes of the American Revolu- 
tion. 


In the Hands of the Redcoats 

A tale of the Jersey ship and the Jersey shore it 
the days of the Revolution. 


Under Colonial Colors 

The story of Arnold’s expedition to Quebec ; of war, 
adventure, and friendship. 


A Lieutenant Under Washington 

A tale of Brandywine and Germantown. 


The Rider of the Black Horse 

A spirited Revolutionary story following the adven- 
tures of one of Washington’s couriers. 


The Red Chief 

A story of the massacre at Cherry Valley, of Brant, 
the Mohawk chief, and of the Revolution in upper New 
York state. 


Marching Against the Iroquois 

An exciting story based on General Sullivan’s expedi- 
tion into the country of the Iroquois in 1779. 


Light Horse Harry's Legion 

A stirring story of fights with marauding Tories on 
the Jersey Pine Barrens. 


The Camp-Fire of Mad Anthony 

This story covers the period between 1774 and 1776 
and follows the adventures of the Pennsylvania troops 
under “Mad Anthony” Wayne. 

Mad Anthony’s Young Scout 

A story of the winter of 1777-1778. 

The Champion of the Regiment 

An absorbing story of the Siege of Yorktown, with 
Noah Dare, so well known to Tomlinson readers, for 
hero. 

The Young Minute-Man of J8I2 

The young hero joins the garrison at Sacket’s Harbor, 
is sent on an expedition down the St. Lawrence, and 
takes part in McDonough’s victory on Lake Champlain. 

The Young Sharpshooter 

The experiences of a boy in the Peninsular Campaign 
of 1862, under McClellan. 

The Young Sharpshooter at Antietam 

Deals with Lee’s invasion of Maryland in 1862, re- 
lating further exciting adventures of Noel, the young 
sharpshooter. 

Prisoners of War 

The experiences of the heroes of “The Young Sharp- 
shooter ” and “The Young Sharpshooter at Antietam,” 
during the course of the war from Antietam to Appo- 
mattox. 

Each volume, illustrated, crown 8vo, $1.35 net . 

Houghton Mifflin Company 

Boston and New York 


BOOKS BY 


ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER 


“ Some of the best boys’ stories of the time 
carry Mr. Pier’s name on the title page. His 
Boys of St. Timothy’s books have always been 
popular with young readers. They are whole- 
some, lively, entertaining tales of schoolboy life 
and sports .” — Detroit Free Press . 


THE JESTER OF ST. TIMOTHY’S 


Illustrated. i2mo, $1.00 net. 


THE CRASHAW BROTHERS 


Illustrated, nmo, #1.25 net. 


THE NEW BOY 



HARDING OF ST. TIMOTHY’S 


Illustrated. i2mo, #1.25 net. 


GRANNIS OF THE FIFTH 


Illustrated. i2mo, $1.25 net. 



HOUGHTON 

MIFFLIN 

COMPANY 


BOSTON 

AND 

NEW YORK 



/ 























oooeo?5i ?lt) 



